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cover story JUNE 2017
Taking on The load As An indispensAble equipment cAtegory in the eArth-moving segment, wheel loAders continue to remAin A cornerstone of the equipment mArket, with mAnufActurers And deAlers Adding vAlue through new models, new technologies And enhAnced support
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f the earth-moving class is at the very core of the field of construction equipment, then the wheel loader is at the heart of the earth movers. As such, wheel loaders are industry bellwethers, and how they fare is often indicative of how the sector as a whole is faring. While this makes them indispensable for the industry, the vagaries of economics dictates the real level of demand. And, as is common knowledge, the Middle East market is far from its heydays of high oil prices and construction booms of the mid-noughties and mid-teens. However, some of the market leaders are still faring relatively well, and looking to future projects in the region to fuel demand. One such is Case, part of Italy’s giant CNH Industrial Group, whose senior business director for the Middle East and Africa, Franco Invernizzi, tells CMME that the brand has a healthy presence of its wheel loaders in several markets around the world, including in advanced economies, and is looking to replicate the same success in the Middle East. “We enjoy double-digit market shares in countries such as the UK, so we have proven machines and we’re an extremely well-recognised name. We need to use our global brand equity to push our presence in the wheel loader segment in this region where our presence has traditionally been heavy in the compact line, such as in the backhoe loader and the skid-steers. Recently, we started to invest in our heavy line for the Middle East, such as graders, excavators and wheel loaders. So the wheel loader is at the core of our strategy to reinforce our heavy line presence in the region,” he says. Invernizzi adds that the Case brand is strong in some markets here while it requires work in others. “Our machines are very well recognised by customers and generally thought of as having good reliability and good specs. So we need to now make customers aware that we should be at the top of their options. We have a plan to do that with demos. We want to put a machine in our customers’ hands starting from after Ramadan and carry on for the rest of this year and into the next.” Case expects the market to be stable in the next six months and then