Hitachi excavators boost Arabian Supply Centre’s market share.
Arabian Supply Centre (ASC), an affiliate of Al Jaber Group, has emerged as one of the most aggressive and prominent distributors of construction and industrial machines in the region, with products including excavators, wheel loaders, hammers, rock crushers and screens, road construction equipment, asphalt plants, diesel generating sets and dewatering pumps.
ASC also has become one of the largest players in the Qatari market for tyres, battery, lubricants and quality spare parts for heavy machinery and trucks.
In general, 2016 was a particularly challenging year for construction equipment dealers in Qatar.
After going through a dream run between 2013 and 2015, where the demand for construction equipment peaked during 2015, the following year the market collapsed by more than 50%, worse than anyone would have thought possible.
The approximate number of large and medium construction machines sold in Qatar during 2015 was in the range of 4,000+, which dropped to less than 2,000 during 2016, leaving most machinery dealers sitting with a stock of machines, which they have resorted to offering at great bargains in an effort to move.
Although ASC’s construction machinery sales were affected in line with the market, our flagship product Hitachi excavators boosted our market share during 2016, signifying the growing popularity of this OEM in Qatar.
Since acquiring the Hitachi dealership two years ago, ASC has been successful in conveying the differentiated value advantage to the customers through investing in the right people, processes and products; building an excellent aftersales support system and going the extra mile to support customers, even beyond commercial considerations if necessary.
Although every customer is unique, they all want to optimise price, quality and availability through their buying decisions. This is where ASC has been successful in packaging its offering through reliable quality products, available at the right time and at affordable prices.
In the words of our CEO, Hisham Hadid, “At ASC, we help our customers keep their ownership and operating costs of equipment to the minimum, while endeavouring to increase the uptime of the machine to over 90%.
“We strongly believe that our ability to go that extra mile to support our customers will go a long way in establishing sound relations and in building lasting reputation.”
Earthmoving equipment has traditionally been categorised as capex expenditure, which requires formal financing. The construction equipment market entered 2017 impacted by previous year’s performance. This can be seen in a set of signs and indicators, the most evident of which are the complexity of guarantees required for obtaining bank financing and increasing lending interest rates.
With the banks adopting stricter lending conditions, Qatar’s construction sector is facing increasingly greater challenges.
Munther Ayoub, ASC’s finance and administration manager feels that these tightening conditions are not likely to continue for long.
A report by QIF (Qatar Investment Fund) said Qatari banks are expected to witness higher credit growth led by upcoming projects related to the FIFA 2022 World Cup and the Qatar National Vision 2030.
Banks are also expecting liquidity conditions to ease on higher government revenue owing to the rise in oil prices. Furthermore, QCB’s data shows that banks in the country are in ‘good’ shape, with credit growth up 12.1% and deposits up 11.8% to the end of December 2016.
According to an economics study by Coface the construction sector remains one of the leading beneficiaries of the Qatari government’s investment policy for the FIFA World Cup 2022 and, while a moratorium has been imposed on new projects, scheduled investments are already substantial and estimated at the equivalent of almost $180 billion.
At ASC, we believe that 2017 is going to be better than the previous year for our industry and more so, we think we are much better placed with an equally balanced focus on not just capital equipment but also on spare parts, service and allied products, which bring greater stability and strengthen our business fundamentals.
Despite the many challenges during 2016, ASC’s aftersales service divisions grew by about 25% and secured three excellence awards from their principals, another testimony that this differentiated approach is yielding results.
More than half of ASC’s staff is focused on service, parts and aftersales functions, signifying the importance attached to the core philosophy of ‘outstanding customer service’.
In the past two years, ASC has invested heavily in expanding its product range, increasing warehousing capacity (almost 10,000m² of storage area) and investing in a sophisticated ERP system from SAP. Thanks to solid management support, ASC has almost doubled its sales revenue during last four years on a y-o-y basis. Recently, the company moved into material handling and industrial tools and consumables business.
Further, we have chalked out aggressive plans for 2017 and leading up to 2020, where ASC has set a goal to be the No. 1 distributor for construction, industrial, material handling, automotive and allied products.
