Tim Waples

Doosan UK's first director and general manager, Tim Waples, has shared his thoughts on the Asian forklift brand and business as it celebrates its 10th anniversary in the UK this year.

"We have come a long way in the past few years," says Waples, also the current president of the British Industrial Truck Association and an IMHX committee member. "It wasn't so long ago that no-one had heard of Doosan, let alone knew what we were capable of."

Doosan's UK forklift business started as a small import operation in Crick and has spread nationally via 24 dealers and a Northampton head office with its own support staff and training facilities. This year, Doosan invested in a forklift parts distribution centre which provides overnight delivery.

After its establishment, Doosan UK was initially managed by a senior South Korean executive but in 2007, Waples, who was 50 then, took over the reins. Following his appointment, the business had two years of record sales before experiencing difficult trading conditions during the peak of the global economic downturn.

"We have been able to focus on our strengths. Our equipment is aimed at those looking for great value and productivity, as well as reliability and simplicity. It's this mass market appeal that has helped us through the recession without too much pain," Waples says.

This northern summer, Doosan announced the formation of a new affiliate company, Doosan Industrial Vehicle Co Ltd, which oversees all of Doosan's global forklift activities and focuses on moving Doosan onto the next level.

"Some of our dealers were a little anxious about the changes, but they needn't have worried. The new business is more focused and allows us greater freedom to pursue our objectives, whilst retaining all the positive links with the wider Doosan Group," Waples explains.

During the implementation of the changes, Waples also negotiated two important investments in the dealer group. "We wanted to consolidate our position with two of our leading distributors by taking a direct stake in their businesses. It's still early days, and I believe the case for direct involvement in sales by manufacturers is not yet entirely proven, but our partnership approach with Genesis and Fork Truck Direct has given these leading dealers a new burst of energy and will pay us dividends in the long run."

Around that time, Doosan national supplier Rushlift secured the UK's largest supply agreement with international construction materials group Saint-Gobain.

"When we began talking to Saint-Gobain, it was clear that this deal was on a completely different level. We wanted to ensure we could provide them everything they needed and it's been challenging, hard work at times, involving direct involvement with the factory and our Seoul head office," Waples says.

The result was a GBP100 million (USD157 million) deal that sees Rushlift supplying over 2,000 counterbalance forklifts to Saint-Gobain's UK manufacturing, retail and merchant sites, including the company's Jewson, JP Corry and Gibbs and Dandy builders' merchant networks.

"It's obviously the largest deal of its kind, but this sort of opportunity comes around very rarely and we can already see this helping us to build up our profile even further as other fleet deals have done previously," Waples says.

The UK is a key market for Doosan. Not only does it fulfill a strategically important role in relation to the rest of Europe, it provides the company with information and feedback in one of the world's most mature materials handling markets.

Waples says Doosan's aim in the UK is to offer a "credible alternative to premium forklift brands". There are currently over 100 Doosan forklift models available in the UK with new products on the horizon.