Modern Mining

COVER STORY

Volvo-branded range of compact electric excavators and wheel loaders. They are too small to have any real applicability in mining but they do indicate just how innovative Volvo CE is and its commitment to future technology.” Looking at some of the key selling points of Volvo’s wheel loaders, Vaughan’s colleague, Lance Mannix, who is GM Sales for Babcock’s Equipment business, says that the machines score highly on everything that matters to owners. “Customers want high productivity, reliability, easy maintenance, dura- bility, safety and, of course, fuel efficiency and Volvo’s loaders tick all these boxes,” he says. “They are also equipped with a number of high-tech features, some of them standard, some offered as options, such as Volvo Co-pilot, which is a cutting-edge on-board touchscreen controlling many ‘intelligent’ machine functions, such as Load Assist and Dig Assist.” Mannix also notes that Babcock can assist cus- tomers with a range of innovative financing options through Volvo Financial Services (VFS), which was officially launched in South Africa in November 2017 and which is backed by Volvo’s global financing arm. “Essentially, VFS represents a one-stop ser- vice for customers wanting to purchase our Volvo machines,” he states. “It is able to offer tailored, customised financing solutions that address the unique requirements of each customer and which are designed to make an investment in Volvo equipment affordable. These solutions include accelerated payments, fixed and floating inter- est rates for enhanced finance control and step payments for customers who want to build equity faster, all tailored to a client’s business cycle.”

Looking to the future, Vaughan says that Volvo CE has identified the wheel loader and excavator markets as holding particular potential for growth. “Volvo’s articulated loaders are our biggest sellers and likely to remain so but we agree with Volvo CE that there is huge scope to ‘grow’ sales of the wheel loaders and excavators and this will definitely be a focus for us in 2020,” he says. “We are already doing exceptionally well with both these ranges in southern Africa but our ambition is to reach the point where they emulate the dominance of Volvo’s articulated haulers in their respective fields. We believe this is very achievable given the sheer qual- ity of the machines and the world-class aftermarket service that Babcock provides here in the southern African market.” 

The L350H achieves up to 5% better cycle times than its predecessor, the L350F.

Top: Volvo L150H loaders deployed to work at an opencast operation.

February 2020  MODERN MINING  13