There is a whole genre of internet video where a professional operator uses a multi-tonne forklift to do something absurdly delicate, like flicking a lighter, stacking an egg, or threading a needle on the forks. It is funny because it should not be possible, and at the 2026 Australian Forklift Championship, a Hyundai forklift did exactly that.
On day two of CeMAT 2026, Hyundai Material Handling Australia leaned all the way into that idea. The Australian Forklift Championship ran as a bowling game, with a Hyundai 25BE-X sending the ball down the lane in front of a crowd, and when the pins went down, the whole stand felt it.
The 20BE-X, one of our proven electric counterbalance trucks on display through the show.
The thing worth saying out loud is that the strike was not a party trick. The precision that lets a forklift bowl is the exact same precision that places a load on a third-level rack without a heart-stop, and it comes from three things working together: the operator’s skill, the machine’s safety systems, and how smoothly the machine actually moves. The Forklift Championship was really a showcase of one quiet idea, which is that a skilled driver who can work all day without getting worn out and without getting hurt is what Hyundai’s engineering is built around.
The strike in progress. The same control that rolls a ball cleanly down a lane is what places a pallet on a high rack.
(New to the event? CeMAT is the materials-handling trade fair that hosts the Australian Forklift Championship, and here is our full guide to Hyundai at CeMAT Australia 2026.)
For anyone who followed the forklift competition in Australia this year, the 2026 championship delivered exactly the kind of thing this industry does not get enough of, with real operators running real machines under real pressure in front of a crowd that knows how hard each manoeuvre actually is. This was Hyundai’s fourth consecutive year as Official Forklift Sponsor, supplying the machines competitors ran across the Counterbalance and Reach Truck categories.
Read the full breakdown on our Australian Forklift Championship results soon, and see how it compares to last year’s champion.
We brought a deliberately broad line-up so a visitor could see the full range of forklifts in one place, with electric, high-voltage, and warehouse reach trucks sitting side by side. The stand featured various machines including:
Equipment came in through our dealer network with Rentcorp. Hyundai Material Handling Australia’s CEO Jeff and General Manager Stehan held the stand through the show, talking through real applications with visitors rather than just handing out brochures.
The Hyundai stand at CeMAT 2026, with the high-voltage B-X Series line-up under the banners.
Hyundai Material Handling Australia’s Jeff and Stehan on the stand.
The same precision and stability that made the bowling demo work is exactly what a partner needs when they are showing off their own gear. Forklift safety specialist GenieGrips displayed its full range of safety mats, cushions, loading mirrors and bumpers, all of it set up on a Hyundai unit we loaned them for the show. Their founder and CEO, Louise Inglese, publicly thanked us for the loan.
It is a small thing on the surface, but the signal is real, because when a company whose entire business is forklift safety chooses your fork truck as the base to present its products on, that is third-party confirmation of what we have been saying all week. Stability and safety are not just words for us, they are the reason our equipment ends up at the centre of everyone else’s stand too.
The 16BRJ-9 drew its own crowd as a fit-for-purpose reach truck built for the narrow-aisle, high-reach work where a counterbalance truck cannot go. If that is your operation, see the best equipment for narrow aisles and what you need to know about high-reach forklifts.
Bowling makes a fun headline, but the smoothness behind it is what a driver feels across a full shift. Reduced noise and vibration, mast damping, anti-roll-back, regenerative braking and selectable drive modes add up to a machine that is placed, not fought.
Spend a day in the cab and that stops being a spec. Lower noise and vibration is the difference between a driver who finishes fresh and one who finishes with a headache and sore back, which is the kind of end-of-shift fatigue that sits behind a lot of late-day accidents. Mast damping and anti-roll-back are what let a driver set a load down precisely instead of wrestling the machine, and the same control that knocked down pins at CeMAT is the control that lands a pallet cleanly on a high rack.
The 25BE-X bowled, but the headline platform on the stand was the new high-voltage B-X Series, represented by the 55B-X. It runs a 309 to 348V lithium system rated for up to 11 hours of work on a roughly 2-hour charge, it is sealed to IP67 and IP69K for the worst floors you have, and it carries a full operator-safety package covering presence sensing, pedestrian detection, auto-hold and high-voltage service isolation. It also took 2025 Product of the Year in lift trucks from Material Handling Product News.
If you want the full picture on runtime, charging and where the B-X earns its keep, our high-voltage B-X Series guide goes deep, and our B-X Series preview from CeMAT covers what we showed on the floor. In short, the precision you saw at the bowling lane and the engineering in those links are the same story told two ways, which is control you can trust, all shift, indoors and out.
The bowling was the fun part, but the point underneath it is a driver who is not worn out, is not fighting the controls and is not breathing fumes, because that is a driver who works safely all day and goes home in the same condition they arrived.
If you are wondering which of these trucks actually fits your floor, that is the better question to start with. Tell us about your aisle widths, your shift patterns and the loads you move, and we will help you work out the right match before you commit to anything. You can explore the high-voltage B-X Series or talk to us about buying, hiring, or a fleet review.
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