Capital Equipment News February 2018

KAMAZ just recently won its 15th Dakar rally this year, testimony to its tough build to conquer challenging operating conditions.

Raphael Gafeev (left), director general of KAMAZ Foreign Trade Company, presents, Gary Bell, Bell Equipment chief executive, with the certificate to officially commem- orate the appointment of Bell Equipment as the Southern African distributor of KAMAZ trucks.

The local tipper truck market is hotly contested and seemingly overtraded with a number of established players already vying for a share of this market. However, Castle notes that it is still a high-volume market which takes delivery of up to 1 800 units per year in a number of different variants, and signs are that the market will continue to grow as economic activity in the region recovers. “After a long period of investigation, we are ready to enter the local tipper truck market, armed with a strong partner and a very good product. Finding the right partner, not only from a product point of view, but one with shared values, was very key in our decision to partner with KAMAZ,” says Castle. “KAMAZ fits the bill for us due to its strong focus on un- derstanding applications and customer ex- pectations, as well as its ability, through experience, to offer products tailored to suit these needs.” First phase The official launch of the first units at bauma CONEXPO AFRICA will mark the start of Bell Equipment’s first phase of the KAMAZ introduction. The first phase will see Bell rolling out four models, available in both left hand and right hand drives to cater for the different markets in the region. The left-hand drives are specifically for the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the right-hand drives will be sold in the rest of the region in countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania and Botswana. “We will only stock the right-hand drive models in South Africa, while the left-hand models will be brought in direct

Brad Castle, product marketing manager at Bell Equipment.

“After a long period of investigation, we are ready to enter the local tipper truck market, armed with a strong partner and a very good product.”

T he southern African tipper truck market has a new entrant. In late 2017, Bell Equipment made a big announcement that it was entering the southern African tipper truck market after concluding a distribution agreement with KAMAZ, a Russian OEM said to be an industry leader in this market segment globally. At the time of writing, Brad Castle, product marketing manager at Bell Equipment, ex- pected the new units to arrive in mid-February just ahead of the official launch at bauma CONEXPO AFRICA. However, several units have already been taken through their paces since last year on various customer sites as part of the testing phase in local operating conditions where they are said to have performed beyond expectations. Castle says after thorough investigations, Bell Equipment saw there was need to offer a tipper solution to complement its existing range of equipment in its stable and further cement the South African manufacturer and equipment supplier’s position as a one-stop shop for its customers’ equipment needs. He reasons that the move is in line with current market trends; there has been a growing uptake of tipper trucks in construction, mining, quarrying and related industries – in line with global trends – as local customers seek cost-effective dumping and haulage solutions. He is of the view that the tipper range will not directly compete with Bell Equipment’s articulated dump trucks, its flagship product, but the two hauling solutions will comple- ment each other. “There is definitely a place for both of these types of trucks depending on the application,” says Castle.

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