{"id":7501,"date":"2023-11-20T07:29:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T07:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/news\/ep-olteck-co-growing-together-towards-a-greener-future\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:10:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:10:05","slug":"ep-olteck-co-growing-together-towards-a-greener-future","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/news\/ep-olteck-co-growing-together-towards-a-greener-future\/","title":{"rendered":"EP & Olteck & Co. – Growing Together Towards A Greener Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olteck & Co., located in the region of Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes in France, is an EP Equipment dealer for 3 years. Cyril Olivieri, Director of Olteck & Co., took some time to sit with Antonio Consoli, Sales Manager for the South of France, and talk about his business and the vision of the future with EP Equipment.<\/p>\n

Hello, today we are with Cyril Olivieri from Olteck, a EP Equipment dealer. Cyril, can you tell us a bit about when you started your business and your primary sector?<\/h2>\n

Olteck has been around since 2006. We initially focused on forklift maintenance and after-sales service, catering to industries like manufacturing, transportation, and materials. Gradually, we expanded into selling machines from various forklift brands, eventually becoming an EP Equipment dealer.<\/p>\n

Customers who trusted Olteck for their after-sales services started leaning towards Olteck for long-term rentals, especially for forklifts. What kind of equipment do your clients inquire about most frequently?<\/h2>\n

We offer a wide range of equipment, from small electric forklifts to heavy-duty 16-ton diesel forklifts. Currently, our clients mainly opt for diesel forklifts in capacities ranging from 4 to 6 tons. However, there is a growing interest in the new technology we introduced \u2013 lithium-ion forklifts. Clients seek electric forklifts that can replace their diesel ones and can be used both indoors and outdoors, multitasking I’d say. And with the possibility of having a lithium battery that’s cleaner and less restrictive than a lead-acid battery.<\/p>\n

Indeed, EP’s approach is to transform old diesel forklifts while maintaining ground clearance and large front wheels.<\/h2>\n

Exactly, these forklifts with large wheels can handle outdoor terrains, even in rainy conditions, making them ideal for various applications. Maybe on gravel paths where the ground isn’t necessarily perfectly flat. This type of forklift can do it. We’ve tested it several times and it’s perfect for this type of use.<\/p>\n

Absolutely, and another crucial aspect that interests a lot of activities in France, and not just in France, is noise pollution. So, the noise, the decibel levels, with lithium battery technology, we can ensure significantly lower decibel levels.<\/h2>\n

In terms of decibels, even on a standard electric forklift truck with a lead-acid battery, EP Equipment’s technology is much quieter, much more flexible in use, and that’s the feedback we’ve had from our customers.<\/p>\n

We always remind people that EP is not just a manufacturer of forklift trucks, but above all a manufacturer of lithium batteries. EP builds forklift trucks around the lithium battery. What do your customers ask you, Cyril, in terms of performance, types of battery for example?<\/h2>\n

Clients often demand replacements that match their existing forklifts. So, it’s true that this is quite complicated to put in place, but when we talk about EFL trucks, we’ll stick with the EFL 303, 353. We have a battery that’s perfectly suited to the job because it lasts about 4 hours for the morning – bearing in mind that these are lithium batteries that can be charged in an hour and a half, or two hours. Generally, forklift operators always have a lunch break of an hour, an hour, and a half, so they leave the truck to charge, and pick it up again after the lunch break, and can still drive until the end of their shift.<\/p>\n

Besides this, we can customize the battery and charger according to the client’s needs, even opting for higher capacities for extended usage.<\/p>\n

We can also change the charger, we did this recently for another customer where we replaced the standard charger with a more powerful charger with greater charging intensity, so we managed to adapt exactly to the customer’s requirements, to the point of being able to tailor-make.<\/p>\n

So, for example, on the EFL Series 3, when you have batteries at 205 ampere-hours or 410 ampere-hours, what is your experience in the field? What kind of operating time can you guarantee, say 2-3 hours on the 205-amp-hour battery and a bit more on charges?<\/h2>\n

On a 205-amp-hour battery, we can go for 4 hours.\u202fOnce again, that’s more or less our experience and as I was saying earlier, over long distances, we’ve deliberately done some driving over long distances with heavy lifts and heavy loads to see if we have a real range of 3-4 hours, and we do. Then we can charge immediately afterwards with the opportunity charge: the famous opportunity charge. We charge every time we have a break, because it’s rare for a forklift to run for 4 hours without stopping, it can happen, but it’s very rare. So, as soon as the driver sets his forklift down, we can charge it for even 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to gain a bit of autonomy, and that’s what we like.<\/p>\n

Another important subject for EP, especially for its partners, to guarantee a good level of after-sales service, is EP Telematics. How does telematics help you in your day-to-day work? We know that nowadays with Industry 4.0 it’s very important to be able to use data from the forklift truck, do you use this data? What type of data do you use and how?<\/h2>\n

Telematics is invaluable for us. What\u2019s really interesting about it is that we have remote access to all the forklifts we’ve provided to our clients. A good example is that we rented one forklift in Lyon, and we sold one in Bordeaux. The customer needed information: I was able to give him thanks to the telematics. We can adjust various parameters such as speed, lifting capacity, and braking remotely. Usually, this is done on a customer\u2019s site , which mean the technician has to go and spend some time on it. With Telematics, I can do it remotely and effortlessly, and it\u2019s a huge save of time.<\/p>\n

Not forgetting the number of machine hours\u2026<\/h2>\n

I was just about to talk about hours, so in the case of long-term hire, it’s true that we have some short-term contracts, and we need to know whether the customer has used his forklift properly, because we have very specific contracts with a set number of hours to be respected, and that’s where we have the values. We also have graphs. It’s true that the graphs are a bit complicated, but we have battery times, battery use, battery charge, so we know when the customer has used the truck, when he has charged it, breakdowns, etc.<\/p>\n

You can send fault codes, you can see how customers are using the battery, if they’re deeply discharged, and you can educate our customers to use the customer’s battery properly so that it lasts as long as possible.<\/h2>\n

Yes, it’s more to advise them too, so we’ll be able to see exactly when they’ve used it, when they’ve put it on charge, maybe it was possible to put it on charge before. So, it’s not to keep tabs on them of course, but it’s to have the data in order to use them and optimize the use of the trucks.<\/p>\n

Lastly, looking ahead, especially in terms of energy transition and the current geopolitical situation, how do you envision the future with EP Equipment?<\/h2>\n

We’re all inclined to change our habits, especially regarding energy consumption. Personally, I’ve installed solar panels on my building to utilize cleaner energy. Thanks to EP-Energy, we now have forklifts with new, more modern technology that is much cleaner than a gas, diesel, or even lead-acid battery electric forklift. I think that’s where the future lies, because at EP we also have the possibility of installing external solar panel systems with external chargers, with integrated, autonomous chargers, that’s the future, that’s it, for me, EP Equipment is the future.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Cyril. Goodbye.<\/h3>\n

Thank you, see you next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":87974,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"tags":[14763],"news-categories":[],"class_list":["post-7501","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dealers-partners-uk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/7501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"news-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-equipment.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-categories?post=7501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}