NEW EQUIPMENT
bauma CONEXPO Africa is Africa’ s largest trade fair for the construction and mining equipment market, providing a great platform for companies looking to introduce new products to the African market. One company that has decided to take advantage of this year’ s event is South Africa’ s Maximum Equipment, which used the trade fair as a launching point for its newest offering: the HMK 370 LC heavy-duty excavator from Turkish construction machinery OEM Hidromek.
Founded in Ankara in 1978, Hidromek initially produced attachments for agricultural tractors, before branching out into producing the first construction machines ever designed by Turkish engineers.
The decision to unveil the machines at the exhibition was made based on the company’ s previous successful experience with the exhibition in 2015, when it first launched its range of Hidromek excavators— only a few months after it had been appointed the OEM’ s official South African dealer. In addition to launching the new excavator, Maximum Equipment also took advantage of this year’ s edition of the trade fair to announce that it would be adding the Hidromek range of backhoe-loaders( TLBs) to its stable.
Maximum Equipment MD Vaughan Ellis explains that while the Hidromek TLBs have been available in South Africa through agent Hitachi for the past six or seven years, from the start of 2018, Hidromek decided to consolidate its product range under a single dealer.“ As we already had the excavators, it made sense to bring the TLBs under the same umbrella, expanding the range and our offering,” he adds.
Since its inception 21 years ago, Maximum Equipment has expanded its services from the sale of second-hand equipment into plant hire, specialising in excavators and attachments. Ellis says,“ We are really excited about this year’ s event, because in addition to showcasing our range of Hidromek excavators and launching the new heavyduty 39-tonne HMK 370 LC HD excavator to the South African market, we will also be launching the Hidromek TLB range. This comprises two models: the HMK102B Alpha and the HMK62SS mini-TLB.”
The show was the company’ s first official event as the dealers for the Hidromek TLB range.“ bauma was the ideal opportunity to showcase the TLBs alongside the excavators,” Ellis comments.
Ellis observes that while this edition of bauma was not as big as previous shows, the smaller size afforded a degree of“ personalisation” and he says that“ there was a lot of interest in our product range, from the people who mattered. The people who came to the show were generally interested”.
HMK 370 LC HD excavator
Designed as a heavy-duty crawler excavator following extensive evaluation of working conditions and operator demands, the 39-tonne operating capacity HMK 370 LC HD is the largest machine in Maximum Equipment’ s line-up. It introduces innovations that allow for improved performance, easy maintenance, operator
MAY 2018 15