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From picking fruit to rescuing cats from trees, access platforms have thousands of uses. Now they are becoming a popular piece of machinery on construction sites in the GCC. Hugo Berger investigates why.

Access platforms, or cherry pickers as they used to be called, were originally invented for use in orchards.

They were designed to let workers pick fruit from high trees with relative ease.

Similar devices, which kept the name cherry pickers, were then used to service telephone lines and electrical equipment on utility poles.

They have also been converted for use on fire engines, giving firefighters the ability to rescue people from tall burning buildings.

Now access platforms, as they are often called these days, are becoming increasingly common in use in the construction industry.

They allow workers to access upper storeys of buildings and work on façades with relative ease.

As safety standards increase in the Middle East, more contractors are using them in their projects.

A number of firms are providing state-of-the-art machines, which not only allow workers to reach greater heights but are also much safer than previous designs.

One of these firms is Manlift, which opened a Middle East branch in 2006.

Manlift Middle East has grown within a short time to become a leading supplier of access platforms and power generators in the GCC.

The company is the exclusive distributor for Teupen Machinenbau GMBH machines in the Middle East.

Manufactured in Gronau, Germany, the machines have specialist lightweight 'spider booms' with working heights of up to 50m.

Manlift is a 50/50 joint venture between local shareholders and Dutch platforms company Riwal.

Riwal operates a fleet of some 9,000 rental units throughout Europe, The Middle East, several former Soviet Union states and Brazil, and has more than 120 Teupen machines in its rental fleet.

With construction projects in the UAE getting bigger and ever more complicated, building and maintaining them is becoming more difficult, says Frank Stenton, overseas business development manager, Teupen.