Materials handling supplier Barloworld Handling has announced a further long term commitment to its ‘Apprentice Scheme' and is currently recruiting new apprentices which, it says, are vitally important for the future of the materials handling industry.

Over the next few years materials handling equipment companies will loose many of their most experienced engineers due to retirement, promotion or career change. Barloworld Handling says professional and experienced engineers are vitally important to help deliver service excellence and customer satisfaction and has restated it's commitment to its engineer recruitment and development programme.

Mark Penwarden, Barloworld Handling's HR Director says "Having our own apprentice programme gives us the opportunity to introduce fresh blood into the business and develop both technical and people skills so our engineering force is the best the industry has to offer. This year alone, we are in the process of recruiting 27 new apprentices across the UK."

Barloworld's apprentice scheme is aimed at 16-19 year old school and college leavers and consists of 4 years structured vocational training supplemented by block release at some of the country's leading technical colleges. The scheme enables apprentices to earn a good wage from day one and obtain an NVQ level 3 or BTEC qualification in forklift engineering on completion of the course.

A qualifying apprentice has very good prospects within industry because there is strong demand for technical persons to maintain the hundreds of thousands of forklift trucks in operation across the UK. In addition, like today's automotive industry, it's no longer a ‘grease and grime' profession. Lift truck engineers regularly use the latest palmtop computers to diagnose problems and fine tune truck performance.

On successful completion of the course, Barloworld apprentices become fully qualified service engineers, working from a regional workshop, customer site or out on the road taking a mobile workshop to the customer. Service engineers are well respected, well paid and have excellent prospects to future development in field service management, parts and operations management or sales. Indeed many Senior Executives of forklift dealerships started their careers as forklift truck apprentices.

Training does not stop once an apprentice is fully qualified. Barloworld has a dedicated in-house national technical training team which provides in the region of 7,000 man days of training per annum at various regional centres where Barloworld has Training Centres of Excellence.