Capital Equipment News July 2018

Maximum Equipment has taken over the distributorship of Hidromek's range of backhoe loaders in South Africa.

Feeler Africa embarked on its backhoe journey in January 2016, with the launch of its 4WD HD96.

TALKING POINTS

“The HM 102 B Alpha’s telescopic arm has a digging depth of up to 5,8 m, which is a big advantage in deep excavations and applications that call for a long reach.”

Vaughan Ellis, MD of Maximum Equipment

“We received good response at bauma CONEXPO AFRICA, with lots of customer and dealer enquiries. We have a few orders for the first units on hand. We are aware that the TLB market is very competitive and we believe it’s essential to have right products for our customers.”

Pavan Nair, GM New Business Development at Mahindra South Africa

However, of note is that this is an overtraded market with close to 20 suppliers jostling for a share of the market, while the dominance of some premium makers such as JCB and Caterpillar in this segment is just hard to beat. This is exacerbated by the shift towards other seemingly cost-effective solutions such as the compact excavator and the compact loader in some of the traditional applications where the TLB has always been regarded as the ultimate solution. Despite the overtraded nature of the market, we have seen several new players entering the backhoe loader market lately. These include Mahindra South Africa, with its Indian made

Mahindra EarthMaster backhoe loader; Feeler Africa, the local distributor of the Indian-made BULL range; and Manitou South Africa, with its newly-launched Manitou TLB844S backhoe loader. While Hidromek’s TLB range is not new to the South African market, it has recently changed distributorship hands, with Maximum Equipment announced as the new dealer earlier this year, taking over from Hitachi Construction Machinery Southern Africa. Early targets Gavin Leask, product manager at Manitou Southern Africa, predicts that the TLB market in South Africa is currently about 1 700 units per year. To

Feeler Africa embarked on its backhoe journey in mid-August 2017, with the launch of its 4WD HD96

Mahindra SA officially launched its TLB offering for the first time at bauma CONEXPO AFRICA in March this year

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS JULY 2018 13