Hyster Co. recently donated a new lift truck to aid wildfire relief in California. The truck will be used in a warehouse located in Miramar, Calif. The State of California and Adventist Community Services (ACS), a nonprofit volunteerorganization, requested donations ofmaterial-handling equipment for use in the state’s recovery warehouses. The Hyster® truck will help with Southern California’s recovery from the devastating wildfires that caused more than $1 billion in damage, and forced the evacuation of 1 million people in October. The Hyster lift truck was shipped to a multi-agency warehouse, where it will be used to handle other donations from across the country.

Bosch Packaging Technology inaugurated its new manufacturing facility in Verna Industrial Estate (Goa/India) early in December. The new facility has 2,600 square meters of space and produces and assembles packaging-technology equipment for candy, solid food and biscuits, as well as pharmaceutical products. The company already has sold more than 400 packaging machines and process equipment in India to companies in the pharmaceutical, confectionery and food-processing industries and exported an additional 75 machines mainly to the food industry. The Goa facility employs 80 associates and has an initial installed capacity of 120 machines per year, with plans to increase this to 240 machines in three years.

In response to the increasing demand in North America, CFS Americas has decided to expand the manufacturing and assembling of its equipment and solutions in their facility in Frisco, Texas. Next to remanufacturing and the production of parts and tooling, CFS has started up the production of mixing equipment. Based on volumes sold and local cost, the production will be gradually extended. The official kickoff was done during a ribbon cutting ceremony held December 17, by David Ryan, CEO of CFS; Tony Bayat, regional director; and Phil Haug, director of operation and supply chain for CFS Americas.

CSB-System International has been chosen by Nestle-Hungaria to migrate existing applications to the CSB-System across all of their ice cream processing plants. Nestle has more than 265,000 employees around the world. “This is an exciting long term partnership,” says Patrick Pilz, vice president of business solutions for CSB-System International. “Nestle gains access to their information to maintain their position in the marketplace as a leading food provider, and we continue to gain market share in the dairy industry.” The new software system will cover all aspects of enterprise resource planning at Nestle, with emphasis on improving planning, mobile ERP, and increasing production efficiency.

Barry-Wehmiller Design Group, Inc. announced that it has opened a new engineering consulting office in Dallas. The new office specializes in industrial automation, process control, software design, architectural engineering and other technology services for a variety of manufacturing industries and product distribution operations. This announcement follows the opening of a new Design Group office in Indianapolis last fall. Design Group Partner Bruce Kuebler is currently leading the expansion office. The Design Group employs 350 engineers and technical professionals throughout 11 offices in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

www.Trucktruth.com, an online resource for lift truck manufacturers, buyers, operators and dealers, has announced FleetSmart Seminar 2008. The invitation-only event on February 15, in Rosemont, Ill., was created to educate material-handling equipment owners and inform them of proper fleet-management practices. The seminar will focus mainly on opportunities to reduce operating expenses and improve productivity in material-handling operations. Several experts in fleet management, telemetry and RFID will lead the free seminar, which will cover the basic principles of fleet management, a review of aftermarket technologies, fleet-management system reporting capabilities and technology-based products to further minimize cost of operations. Attendees will also have the opportunity to view several products with advanced technology and speak one-on-one with fleet-management professionals.

Bosch Sigpack Systems, a Bosch Packaging Technology company, received the Packaging Award WorldStar 2007 from the World Packaging Organization for its packaging concept Burgopak. A total of 30 products from companies worldwide have been awarded in the yearly competition for innovation, design and functionality. Burgopak, with a patented sliding mechanism, was selected as having one of the best pharmaceutical packaging formats. Besides pharmaceutical products, such as blister packs, the Burgopak is suitable for packaging chewing gums, hard candy or consumer goods in various format sizes, including CDs, DVDs or SIM cards.

Stellar has launched its new Web site, www.stellar.net. Stellar is a fully integrated firm focused on design, engineering, construction and mechanical services worldwide. The company now employs more than 1,000 people worldwide and is the nation’s largest design-build firm in the food industry. The new site was built utilizing the latest Web technologies and complies with Web standards and accessibility guidelines, ensuring visitors with disabilities can access the site. Search engine optimization tactics were employed to improve the volume and quality of traffic to the new site from search engines. Stellar will continually update the site via a new custom content management system.