EQUIPMENT FINANCE, RENTAL & LEASING
Australia, National Group, last year added Wolff
Group to its offering.
Mark Ackroyd, Managing Director of National
Group, said the acquisition has widened the
services the company can offer as “Wolff provides
contract mining and wet hire where we, as
National Group, previously could not”. Those
specialised services, which come with the
provision of labour and management on site, are
still run under the guidance of Wolff in a
specialised services division.
This is not all Wolff brings to National Group,
though. It was the first company in Australia to
use Command for dozing, a Cat ® Minestar™
offering, which Wolff leveraged to carry out large
scale satellite bulk dozer push operations at the
Curragh coal mine, in Queensland.
Ackroyd said its customers were looking for a
company like National Group – which, prior to the
acquisition, already had the capabilities to handle
all transport, assembly and delivery associated
with rental equipment through several dedicated
subsidiaries – to offer more services.
“Customers do like to have a one-stop shop in
many respects where multiple different parts of
the business can service the mine over the whole
life,” he told IM. “The big mining companies,
especially, are looking for vendors to carry out
multiple tasks, as opposed to hiring many
different vendors.”
This is where Wolff’s automation expertise
comes in handy, with the Queensland-
headquartered company already leveraging the
experience Wolff has in both semi-automated
dozer push and semi-automated blasthole drill
operations.
“We have just picked up a new mining
automation contract with a large mining house,
which will be made public shortly,” Ackroyd said in
late February. “That work started last month but it
had been in the making for some time. That contract
is to perform set work for a significant period.”
The ability to take on such contracts and make
a success of them will not only be hinged on
National Group’s in-house expertise, but also on
the relationship it has with the OEMs that supply
equipment to the firm.
As one of the biggest buyers of ultra-class and
large mining equipment in Australia, National
Group already has a close alignment with
manufacturers such as Liebherr, Komatsu and
Hitachi. It, too, has a strong relationship with OEM
dealers in strategic locations.
One of the strongest associations it has built is
with Cat dealer Hastings Deering and Caterpillar
itself.
Ackroyd explained: “We buy a lot of equipment
and spare parts from Hastings Deering and they
have also been involved in the automation of
dozers (at Curragh). We have a very good
relationship with them.”
78 International Mining | APRIL 2020
National Group’s recent corporate activity would
indicate its rental solutions have been in demand
of late; a point Ackroyd acknowledges.
“Demand for rental equipment has increased
from our perspective; where we were previously
supplying individual pieces of equipment to site,
we’re now supplying larger fleets to mining
customers,” he said.
The company has equipment on order
continuously to serve this demand, but it also has
many different fleets in various locations to shift
around should customers require machinery.
“This allows us to offer much shorter lead times
than most OEMs,” Ackroyd said.
When it comes to fending off competition from
not only other rental companies but OEMs, he was
quick to point out what differentiated National
Group from the rest of the market:
“We offer a quality service and ultra-class and
late model machines with good availability,” he
said. For example, National Group, last year,
became the first company in the world to get its
hands on Cat’s new generation D11 dozer. It has
since supplied this and other new generation D11s
to BHP Mitsubishi Alliance’s (BMA) Blackwater
coal mine, in Queensland.
Ackroyd concluded: “We’re always thinking
outside of the box, looking to accommodate any
type of customer enquiry no matter how complex
or complicated it may be. This will continue to
serve us well.”
Digging deeper
One of National Group’s competitors, Emeco
Holdings, has looked to go underground to
expand its offering and appeal in the Australia
equipment rental space.
It recently acquired Pit N Portal to build a hard-
rock underground equipment services division,
while more than double its gold exposure in
Australia.
The deal for Pit N Portal Mining Services and Pit
N Portal Equipment Hire came with over 100
pieces of specialised underground mining
equipment (including LHDs, trucks, production &
development drills), over 500 pieces of
infrastructure equipment, more than 300
employees across strategic locations in Perth and
Kalgoorlie, and customer sites across Australia.
Having acquired Force Equipment and Matilda
Equipment in the last few years to strengthen its
equipment rental business in surface mining, the
company had been looking for increased
underground exposure, Managing Director and
CEO, Ian Telstrow, said.
“Pit N Portal allows Emeco to leverage its
current core capabilities and expand into a new
market,” he said earlier this year when the deal
was announced. “The underground mining sector
is undoubtedly growing, and this represents an
attractive adjacency for Emeco, providing Emeco
with a solid platform for growth.”
Established in 2002, Pit N Portal specialises in
the provision of hard-rock mining equipment and
services to the Australia underground mining
sector. Core operations include equipment rental,
as well as mining services and maintenance
solutions for underground mines. Prior to the
acquisition, it operated the largest underground
equipment rental fleet in Australia, according to
Emeco.
Emeco said the transaction provided a strong
platform for Emeco to grow as a provider of
underground mining services with a solid tender
pipeline, particularly in Western Australia-based
gold, nickel and base metals projects. There are
also potential operational advantages through Pit
N Portal’s strategically located workshops in Perth
and Kalgoorlie, it added.
Pit N Portal is focused on innovation and
technology, with tele-remote and autonomous
equipment, and delivers a wide range of
specialised services, Emeco said in January.
Coal conundrum
Commodity diversification was part of the
rationale for Emeco’s buy of Pit N Portal and it’s
fair to say other rental companies and contractors
heavily tied to the thermal coal market have been
looking at similar activity to reduce their reliance
on this part of the mining market.
While demand for thermal coal is still globally
strong, the sentiment from investors and
environmental groups is anything but. This is
making it increasingly difficult to operate in the
space.
It is getting harder to find insurance for thermal
coal operations and, as van den Berg says,
companies mining this mineral are also finding it
tough to fund equipment purchases.
“Our analysis is that major financing
institutions, credit insurers and related industries
are starting to move away from coal,” he said.
This is putting increasing pressure on the
financing arms of companies like Sandvik that
manufacture and sell equipment that can be used
to mine coal. Demand for equipment financing
from the sector has therefore grown.
While this is a positive for a company like
Sandvik, it also comes with the challenge of
structuring these deals “without using the same
insurance and partners we would normally have at
our disposal”, van den Berg said.
He clarified: “There is only so much we can do
as we too have an obligation to our shareholders
to structure transactions that are acceptable from
a sustainability and profitability point of view.
“We are obviously stretching ourselves to the
maximum of our abilities, but it is becoming a
challenge.”
He ended on a positive note: “We are still open
to this type of financing though.” IM