Capital Equipment News February 2017

BUSINESS

To demonstrate the importance of southern Africa to Cummins’ ventures in Africa, Cummins Southern Africa has benefitted from several key investments to build its capacity to support the distribution business in the region.

business. The company is now the largest Cummins distributor in Africa, and is one of the two largest distribution businesses of the engine maker in Middle East and Africa. Strategic market Ouenniche reiterates that southern Africa remains a key market for Cummins despite its strong reliance on mining, which is not obviously enjoying the best of times at present. Despite the struggling mining sector, diversification is carrying the business through the turbulent times. “Cummins Southern Africa remains a very strategic market for Cummins. While mining, which is a big market for us, is not at its best, our engine business spreads us across other growth markets such as power generation, marine, locomotives, trucks and construction. We see a lot of opportunity in all those areas,” says Ouenniche. “We are very optimistic of our potential growth. When mining returns, we will be well positioned to make the most of it through the investments we have made in southern Africa.” While Pimi agrees that mining – the breadbasket for southern African economies – is down, he argues that it is not out. “There is still a lot of mineral extraction going

Rachid Ouenniche, MD of Distribution for Cummins Africa-Middle East (left), hands over the Distributorship Award to Thierry Pimi, MD of Cummins Southern Africa.

on. While some greenfields projects have been delayed, extraction hasn’t stopped. Commodity prices have this funny way of going up and down and right now, on average, they are down, but there is activity going on. The most important thing at this point is optimisation across the board. We just need to prepare ourselves to adjust quickly in difficult times,” says Pimi.

Pimi is also encouraged by other business opportunities in southern Africa, other than mining. “Southern Africa is not immune to the infrastructure development gap that we have seen in all parts of the continent. We

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