Bell spreads its dealer footprint across South America

The appointment of three new dealers in South America in recent months has positioned South African heavy equipment manufacturer and articulated dump truck (ADT) specialist, 2983 Bell Equipment, to expand its footprint and market share on the continent.

Raico and Seijiro Yazawa Iwai (SYI), two 439 Liebherr dealers, have been appointed in the mining-focused countries of Chile and Venezuela respectively while REPAS Sociedad Anónima, a 429 Hyundai dealer, has been appointed in Argentina.

“We have appointed like-minded companies that have proven capacity to support a growing machine population with spare parts and dedicated service,” says Llewellyn Roux, Bell Equipment regional marketing manager.

“These are well-established dealers with existing sales and support networks that have their own rental fleets as well as direct sales. We have also purposely aligned with existing dealers in the region that have a full range of loading tools. By adding our Bell trucks to their offering, these dealers are now able to deliver a quality full line solution to their customers.”

Raico’s Cristóbal Alexandroff says: “We are very happy to be able to add a world-class brand such as Bell to our product offering. We believe that the Bell ADTs are a perfect match for our earthmoving and mining portfolio and will open up opportunities with business areas, customers and tenders that we couldn’t previously tackle.”

Mitsuru M Yazawa, vice president of SYI, says: “We are happy to bring our partnership with Bell a step forward, allowing us to strengthen our product portfolio for our heavy machinery division.”

Meanwhile, Repas, which has 50 years of machine trading experience in Argentina, entered into the mining and primary rock production segment in recent years and a partnership will Bell was a natural business progression.

“Our family-owned board took the decision to enter this segment influenced by market demand and the growth of Hyundai Heavy Industries and Terex, our long term and internationally renowned alliances,” says Pablo Schulzen, Repas vice president.

“This new challenge includes gaining market penetration for our new players, such as 668 Terex Finlay crushers and screens; Soosan breakers and drills, and now Bell ADTs, which will transport from the blast to crush. The first Bell B30E has arrived in Argentina and we expect to have it working in one of the country's leading quarries in due course.”

The new dealer appointments are said to come at an opportune time considering SNL Metals & Mining data, which shows planned capital spending in the South American mining sector increased by almost US$50 billion from October 2015 to April 2016.