Major trends and technologies are redefining how ports around the world move cargo. But while key drivers advance the industry as a whole, no two individual operations are the same, which pushes equipment providers like Hyster to not only bring new solutions to market, but provide a level of customisation to meet customers on their terms.

Addressing this variability requires optimising how people, processes and technology fit together. For Ricky Hirani, he relies on lessons learned at every step of his career, from nightclub doorman and Formula Student team leader to his current position leading big trucks and port equipment for Hyster.

Hirani fell into security work after attending university. “It was a tough job. To do it effectively we have to work as a team. No one has eyes in the back of their head, you have to trust that your team has got your back and you have got theirs.

Being in those type of situations taught me about teamwork and there are many transferrable skills I learned that I can still apply today.”

He then moved to the Netherlands to study automotive engineering at HAN University of Applied Sciences. Here he became an integral part of the Formula Student racing team, an F1-style competition where universities each put forward a team who design, build and race a car. Starting out as the team’s power train engineer, Hirani managed the entire project for two years.

“That experience was another form of building and working as a team, bringing in sponsors – it was hands-on experience,” he says. “In academia if you get a question wrong you can still get some marks for showing how you reached that answer.

But this was a real company structure with real deliverables and real sponsors spending real money. You don’t want to have to explain to the sponsors why the car they are supporting was not running.”

He remains involved to this day, having set up an alumni technical committee as a way for former team members to give advice and support to the team.

Valuable experience

After graduating, Hirani joined Hyster. He is based at the Nijmegen plant, where Hyster has been producing its big trucks line for more than 70 years. “The factory is right outside my office, so I can see the products and the people who put them together. I have friends in software development and it’s much harder for them to visualise the end product.”

“Ultimately our products help a company move materials from A to B. But we deal with so many different types of organisations across the globe which all bring their own requirements and regulations, so that has been a fun challenge to engage with.”

His previous roles have helped him develop the skill set needed for his role as global commercial product leader, big trucks & port equipment. “I am very people and process driven.

From my experiences with the racing team and in security, I learned that I could add processes and tools to help people.”

He notes that it isn’t about eliminating waste, but all employees striving to spare each other unnecessary effort. Here, the OEM’s aim is to foster a culture of mutual support, enabling people to help each other.

“People need the right tools and processes to help them work together to achieve the right results. I see my role as bringing people together to understand the pain points and find a creative way to make the process work.”

Business agility

Hyster, like many companies, has felt the impacts of change demanded partly as a response to post-covid world and the supply chain challenges it brought. “The business has become more agile as it has adapted to those challenges and to new ways of working. For example, we have expanded production to address global manufacturing resilience.”

There are also myriad customer trends to address. “The first thing we try to do is understand the customer pain points,” he adds. “We work with our dealer partners to find out how to address them.”

Decarbonisation and labour are two of the most prominent challenges for Hyster clients.

The former is about customer readiness. “The technology is advancing at different rates in different areas. Our goal is to design our product to be at the right level of customisation to meet those differing customer needs.

“The way I see it, the customers are on a spectrum of readiness for zero emissions solutions. Our job is to understand where they are on that spectrum and develop the right solutions for them.”

For labour shortages, it is about product familiarity. “The ‘know one, know all’ philosophy, for example, means an operator can step into a diesel truck or the electric equivalent and it is the same environment. What they touch and feel, the performance levels and lifting speeds – it is the same ‘office’.

“Another part of that labour challenge is maintenance. We look at how we can limit that learning curve from diesel to electric.

For example, a lot of the major components on the diesel trucks are carried over to electric.

That means the maintenance professionals can just focus on learning about the highvoltage architecture.”

Half a decade

Hirani will mark five years with Hyster in February, and it has been a busy half-decade. Recently, the company launched an expanded range of lithium-powered forklift trucks, and is testing a hydrogen fuel cell-powered (HFC) ReachStacker and a electric empty container handler.

The J10-18XD forklift series, powered by integrated lithium-ion batteries recently won an Archies Award for best new product – the Archies are organised by the UK’s Material Handling Association (MHA). The Hyster HFC-powered ReachStacker was also recognised as a transformative product in the 2025 BIG Innovation Awards. The machine is part of a pilot programme at the Port of Valencia, Spain and is the first ReachStacker application in Europe using fuel cell technologies for container handling equipment in real operating conditions.

This summer, Hyster unveiled an electric empty container handler, which at the time of going to press was still in the test phase before going into production.

“I am proud of each of these projects in different ways,” he says. “For example, the J10-18XD represents a completely new way of introducing an electric offering to the market. The ReachStacker pilot has helped us to understand the wider scope of the application much better. With diesel we didn’t need to think about the refuelling infrastructure because it is already so well established. But when it comes to hydrogen, that is creating opportunities for us to think both inside and outside the fence of the port.”

Future fuels

When it comes to which fuel type will win out, he believes it depends on the customer’s position.

“There are customers who are ready to support hydrogen and those who are interested but not ready yet. And those for whom hydrogen will not be the right solution. At the moment there are specific areas of the world, hubs and hot spots where we are working with the customer to try and understand what we can do that will work for them.

“Lithium-ion powered machines may present other challenges for customers. With just one truck operations only need a to plug in that machine having a small affect on grid capacity.

But with a fleet of machines, that might overload the grid. Different industries are also moving at different rates, so we have to design machines to keep the same level of productivity, whether it is diesel, electric or hydrogen.”