While the UK, the US and Europe continue reel from Brexit, Trump and the rise of the far-right, in a reactionary discourse often directly marketed as patriotic individuals taking a stand against globalisation, other parts of the world are still benefitting.
It is in fact hard to imagine the GCC as we know it without the connectivity of a global trade system. Cities like Dubai were a trading centre before it was anything else — an early hub for traders meandering along the Gulf coast selling commodities like wheat flour and rice.
From a GCC perspective, the rejection of globalisation would be both economically suicidal and absurd. On the contrary, the region is looking to step up its entanglement in international trade, logistics, manufacturing and aviation.
There is also a secondary trend that comes about with globalisation, for those that pursue the phenomenon to its logical conclusion, and that is glocalisation — the localisation that comes about as a product of globalisation.
In the construction equipment industry, we see this most clearly in the provision of sales and aftersales functions at a local level. While even just 10 years ago it was quite common for major equipment or machinery brands to have no direct presence from the region, today it is rare.
As a second rule of thumb, even those brands that were not directly present in the region would likely have formed a partnership with some local entity to at the very least distribute their product. Today, this is practically a prerequisite for doing business in the region, and for brands that would like to achieve significant share, acting to the contrary is inconceivable.
The starkness of this phenomenon is drawn into view across the January 2017 issue of PMV Middle East, not least in the interview with Dehong Lu, who reveals that even the China State Construction Engineering Corporation has a tendency to favour companies with the strongest aftersales support in the region, regardless of whether they are Western or Chinese brands.
The magazine also looks at the effort made by Liebherr to coordinate at an extremely intimate level with its local teams on the ground to bid for the Istanbul New Airport project — including, critically, the provision of a dedicated parts warehouse and technicians on site to provide 24/7 maintenance to the fleet of 58 cranes.
Emrah Duman, director of international sales at Ford Trucks, makes clear the centrality of securing a local presence to the manufacturer’s strategy for its entry into the Gulf market.
In fact, it has long been the case in countries like Saudi Arabia and Oman that the only sure way of doing business has been to be on the ground — but it is the product of global trends coming full circle that we now see every brand, great and small, coming to the customer.
In many ways the trend is a great equaliser, humbling the mighty and raising the meek.
The next step in the process, and which we already see in heavy trucks, though not yet in heavy machinery, is the establishment of local assembly and ultimately local production. And that is a trend with truly glocal benefits.
Global to glocal: a trend to be aware of in 2017
As the West enters an ideological state where naysaying globalisation is all the rage, the Gulf and the equipment industry present a contrary argument
While the UK, the US and Europe continue reel from Brexit, Trump and the rise of the far-right, in a reactionary discourse often directly marketed as patriotic individuals taking a stand against globalisation, other parts of the world are still benefitting.
It is in fact hard to imagine the GCC as we know it without the connectivity of a global trade system. Cities like Dubai were a trading centre before it was anything else — an early hub for traders meandering along the Gulf coast selling commodities like wheat flour and rice.
From a GCC perspective, the rejection of globalisation would be both economically suicidal and absurd. On the contrary, the region is looking to step up its entanglement in international trade, logistics, manufacturing and aviation.
There is also a secondary trend that comes about with globalisation, for those that pursue the phenomenon to its logical conclusion, and that is glocalisation — the localisation that comes about as a product of globalisation.
In the construction equipment industry, we see this most clearly in the provision of sales and aftersales functions at a local level. While even just 10 years ago it was quite common for major equipment or machinery brands to have no direct presence from the region, today it is rare.
As a second rule of thumb, even those brands that were not directly present in the region would likely have formed a partnership with some local entity to at the very least distribute their product. Today, this is practically a prerequisite for doing business in the region, and for brands that would like to achieve significant share, acting to the contrary is inconceivable.
The starkness of this phenomenon is drawn into view across the January 2017 issue of PMV Middle East, not least in the interview with Dehong Lu, who reveals that even the China State Construction Engineering Corporation has a tendency to favour companies with the strongest aftersales support in the region, regardless of whether they are Western or Chinese brands.
The magazine also looks at the effort made by Liebherr to coordinate at an extremely intimate level with its local teams on the ground to bid for the Istanbul New Airport project — including, critically, the provision of a dedicated parts warehouse and technicians on site to provide 24/7 maintenance to the fleet of 58 cranes.
Emrah Duman, director of international sales at Ford Trucks, makes clear the centrality of securing a local presence to the manufacturer’s strategy for its entry into the Gulf market.
In fact, it has long been the case in countries like Saudi Arabia and Oman that the only sure way of doing business has been to be on the ground — but it is the product of global trends coming full circle that we now see every brand, great and small, coming to the customer.
In many ways the trend is a great equaliser, humbling the mighty and raising the meek.
The next step in the process, and which we already see in heavy trucks, though not yet in heavy machinery, is the establishment of local assembly and ultimately local production. And that is a trend with truly glocal benefits.
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