Material Handling Systems: Guide to Trolleys & Custom Lifts
Published 03/09/2026
Discover how lifting solutions can help operations achieve safe and quick lifting. TAWI provides mobile lifting trolleys for common applications, and Alum-a-Lift designs custom-engineered lifts. Both are available through any TAWI office worldwide.
Lifting items manually is slow and leads to high chances of injuries. When companies look at ergonomic lifting equipment to help, there are many different options available.
TAWI offers many different attachments, so operations can safely handle a wide range of items.
This article is a guide to lifting trolleys and explores:
What are lifting trolleys?
Diverse attachments to lift your products
Lifting in environments with strict requirements
How to choose the right trolley for your operations
What are Lifting Trolleys?
Lifting trolleys are ergonomic tools that assist in lifting, rotating, and moving items. A battery-powered motor lifts and lowers the load for the operator at the push of a button. This means material handling no longer requires the physical effort of lifting.
User friendly and flexible features:
Easy-to-use control panel
Variable mast size
Detachable hand control
Efficient battery pack
Reliable braking system
Adjustable legs
Wide selection of tools that can lift different types of items
The operator steers the trolley with the handle and positions the load by using the push-button on the control. This improves safety and efficiency because items can be lifted the same way every time at a consistent speed.
Alum-a-Lift Joins Piab Group
TAWI is a part of Piab Group, a large company that offers gripping, lifting, and moving solutions. In 2024, Alum-a-Lift joined Piab Group.
Alum-a-Lift designs custom-engineered lifts for high-value, hard-to-handle components. Together, TAWI and Alum-a-Lift cover the full range of lifting needs.
TAWI handles common applications with proven, ready-to-configure trolleys. Alum-a-Lift engineers one-of-a-kind solutions when standard equipment won't do the job.
Diverse Attachments to Lift Your Products
One reason lifting trolleys are such a useful tool is the wide range of attachments that can be added. Whether you need to lift a reel, drum, or something completely unique, we’ve got you covered.
Platform
A platform attachment is a flat surface that an item rests on. Other support can be added like a V-block on the platform, which can hold rolls in place.
Provides full surface support under boxes, crates, and other items
Spreads the weight of the load to avoid pressure on small areas
Supports easy slide on and slide off movement, which is useful for items without any openings or a core to grip
Booms
A boom is an “arm” that extends from the trolley’s mast and serves as a structural support.
Holds the item away from the mast so the user can pick from the side of pallets, racks, machines, etc.
Slides into the centre of a core to handle various types of rolls
Coregripper
The Coregripper handles rolls from the core.
Expands inside the core to lock into place
Handles the roll’s weight from the core instead of squeezing it from the outside
Supports lifting and rotating rolls to get it into the proper position
Forks
The fork attachment has two prongs that extend from the mast.
Enters openings or skids in containers that are meant for fork handling
Slides under pallets, crates, or bins to lift the item from below
Supports multiple points of the loads
Easy Squeeze
The easy squeeze grips reels from the outside. It has two arms that squeeze the reel and keep it in place for lifting.
Grips the outside of an item like box, crate, drum, or roll with adjustable pressure
Secures a load so it can be lifted, especially helpful for items that have no pallet or core
Maintains ergonomic working height, so workers don’t have to manually grapple with bulky or awkward items
Custom Applications
Some applications are unique, and standard attachments aren’t enough. That’s when custom-designed attachments can help.
TAWI works with companies to understand their lifting needs and designs custom tooling when needed.
Customer problem: Newrest needed to lift airline catering trolleys. Workers were manually doing it, faced the risk of injury, and couldn’t find equipment flexible enough to work for their process.
TAWI solution: A custom TAWI lifting trolley helps Newrest quickly and safely lift four half-size airline trolley or two full-sized ones at one time.
Alum-a-Lift has deployed over 12,000 custom-engineered lifting solutions across 50+ countries, with full in-house manufacturing including CNC milling, welding, assembly, and testing. They have a collection of proven designs and experience with adapting to customers' exact requirements and restrictions.
Every Alum-a-Lift product comes with full documentation, and they understand how to create well-supported lifting solutions. This saves your engineers from building a one-off solution that only one person understands.
Alum-a-Lift equipment is easy to service and outlasts its intended use.
Lifting in Environments with Strict Requirements
Some facilities like pharma, chemical, and food have strict cleanliness requirements. Also, the materials used for a production area sometimes need equipment suitable for hazardous areas.
Cleanroom
Cleanrooms need to minimise airborne particles and keep the space safe for sensitive processes.
Problem: They wanted to lift larger bottles to produce bigger batches. The area was a tight production space and is under hygiene standards.
Solution: TAWI designed a custom trolley with a remote controlled gripping tool that could lift bottles and rotate them 360 degrees.
Results: This increased batch sizes, improved productivity, reduced heavy and awkward lifting, and supported space-efficient workflows.
Carsten Mamsen Jessen, Molecular Biologist at Ampliquon, commented on the difference: “TAWI’s mobile electric lifter allows us to easily pick up bottles and move them between stations, while the gripping mechanism enabled an increase in bottle size up to 30 litres, thereby increasing our batch size.”
Explore other case studies to learn how TAWI’s trolleys have helped companies around the world lift items like reels, tyres, metal components, food packaging, and more.
