Interview with Franco Invernizzi, the Senior Business Director CNH Industrial Construction Equipment for Africa and Middle East on the state of CASE construction equipment in Africa.
Which are your most popular products in Africa?     Â
The most popular CASE machines in the African Market are our backhoe loaders, and in particular the 570T model. We are further building on this success with the introduction of he new 570ST model, which has been specifically designed and engineered to match the requirements of customers in the region who look for a reliable and performing machine, and a fast return on their investment. It delivers a superior performance, high torque and best-in-class fuel economy, and its S-shaped boom is designed for premium digging and lifting performance. This new model completes our backhoe loader range, which offers technically advanced solutions that cover all business needs, from big municipalities to one-man-band customers.
Another very successful product range is our latest new introduction, the new compactors, which have bee extremely well received. The complement our state-of-the-art motor graders – also one of our best sellers in Africa – and crawler dozers, further strengthening our offering for the road building industry.
What is unique or special about your products or services that you want our readers to know about? Â
CASE is one of the few true full liners in the industry, and this enables us to provide a 360° solution for our customers’ business needs. Our complete product offering ranges from crawler excavators, wheel loaders, dossers and graders, all the way to skid steer loaders and backhoe loaders. And, about the latter, let’s not forget the proud history of CASE backhoe loaders, which were the first in the industry.
Most importantly, in serving our customers at CASE we go well beyond the product, with a complete offering of training, service and financing support tailored to the requirements of every individual customer. We focus our energy and passion on helping customers face their operational and business challenges with highly efficient and intuitive products together with all-round support. In addition, being part of a group such as CNH Industrial means that we benefit from its considerable resources, from the highly efficient logistics to the industrial excellence and state-of-the-art R&D centers.
What advice would you give someone wanting to buy/ what should they be aware of so as to make the best decisions?Â
Currently the markets in Africa are opening up and CASE is ready with strong and reliable product and after-sales support for our customers. Our partnership with our dealers is key to providing the high level of service construction operations expect of CASE. We are investing significantly in our network, maintaining our strong focus on increasing our footprint by appointing only the strongest and best dealers. We are actively working to improve our network coverage in areas of the continent where the CASE presence needs to be strengthened. We have for instance recently appointed new CASE dealers in the Mauritius and in Angola. Our objective is to be close to all our customers and maximize their satisfaction.
What do you see as the emerging trends in the industry?
In Africa, with the exception of the Maghreb, we are seeing a very positive trend in the construction industry across all markets, large and small, with a particular strong growth in the Sub-Saharan countries. In this positive context, CASE is performing well and gaining market share.
The road building industry is going through a great expansion, driven by local government and UN sponsored projects being rolled out across the continent. At CASE we are ready to support these infrastructural projects with our comprehensive offering, which includes our state-of-the-art motor graders and crawler dozers, powerful crawler excavators and wheel loaders, and much more.
Any new technology breakthroughs?
At CASE, we believe technology should be simple, practical and purposeful. We don’t implement technology for technology’s sake or because the competition is doing it. We design and bring equipment/solutions to market that will have a direct and immediate impact on contractors, improve their ability to compete and grow their business, and ultimately improve their bottom line through lower total cost of ownership than our competition.
We are constantly investing in developing, upgrading, renewing and extending our extensive product offering. There are three main drivers in our product development strategy: machine up time to guarantee our customers’ productivity; ease of use so their operators can learn the skills to operate at their best quickly; and efficiency to guarantee low Total Cost of Ownership for our customers.
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