Earlier this year Invicta holding company acquired High Power Equipment (HPE) Africa. the acquisition was a “strategic investment which will enable Invicta to broaden its product offering to the plant hire, construction, quarrying and mining industries in South Africa and into Africa” said Tony Sinclair, CEO of Capital Equipment Group, the Invicta subsidiary which brought the company.
IMPORTING QUALITY
As the only distributor of Hyundai’s earth moving equipment HPE Africa is a valuable resource for the industry and has been since it achieved this position under the leadership of Alan Grady 13 years ago.
The company has made a flagship product of Hyundai’s range, distributing products as esteemed as Astra off -road, articulated and rigid dump trucks, Soosan hammers and drills, MB crusher buckets and Hyundai Packaged Power Stations. Every product in HPE Africa’s range has been specially selected to meet the special needs of their South African client base. Their products confirm to European emissions standards, environmental regulations, build requirements and safety standards.
With top of the line products and an uncompromisingly customer-driven focus, HPE Africa has seen exponential growth in its service of the plant hire, mining, construction, demolition and materials handlings sectors, for private and government customers alike. However in this day and age it simply isn’t enough to provide quality products alone and HPE Africa’s after sales care features comprehensive full or part service contracts, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the firm’s stand-by workshops and parts departments. Internal technicians, artisans, the parts department and an excellent field service team are constantly working to provide excellent after-sales service to ensure minimal downtime on equipment.
The company recognises that in the current climate it is important not just to provide top of the range equipment, but to be able to keep older equipment in perfect working order. this is particularly true when importing industrial equipment into Africa, where the climate and conditions can take a greater toll than the manufacturers originally planned for. Fortunately Grady himself has been involved with Hyundai Heavy Industries, and research carried out in Korea has led to new product being built to withstand even the most demanding conditions.
Fundamentally, HPE Africa has learned to thrive by understanding the needs of its customers. For instance, when Hyundai offered the Hyundai RC210-7 excavator, general manager Neil Sauls pointed out that it was a reintroduced version of the older Hyundai RC220-7LC excavator model. HPE Africa was able to market these products to businesses that had less in the way of financial resources but didn’t want to compromise on the quality of their products. HPE Africa is aligned with Hyundai in that it too isn’t willing to compromise on quality to compete on price with inferior imports. As Sauls said in a recent interview, “As a result, we have reintroduced our older -7 technology, which is tried-and-trusted worldwide. The final outcome is that HPE Africa clients can now purchase a powerful and reliable 21-ton excavator for a highly competitive price.”
In the current climate savings like this are crucial for businesses that depend on liquid capital to invest in and expand their business.
“In challenging economic conditions, the money saved on the purchase of the Hyundai RC210-7 excavator can be reinvested into the company to make it more financially stable,” Sauls pointed out, “or it may open up new avenues of opportunity for entrepreneurs who simply would have been unable to afford such an excavator in the past.”
The Hyundai RC210-7 excavator includes features such as a medium undercarriage, standard boom and stick and a 1 m3 bucket capacity, the whole thing powered by a 5,9 ℓ Cummins 6 BT diesel engine, fully compliant with Tier II low emission standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
“Compliance with EPA specifications ensures that Cummins engines minimise environmental damage by generating clean power, while increasing fuel efficiency and lowering operating costs, without affecting the power of the engine,” Sauls said. “The power and versatility of the Hyundai RC210-7 makes it the ideal choice for quarrying and construction applications in particular.”
As with all of HPE Africa’s products, the company has a wide stock of spare parts for the Hyundai RC210- 7. The company prides itself on the in-house accuracy of its parts stock, which currently stands at more than 97 percent. A system of strict controls and cycle counts ensures that fast-moving parts are more readily-available so that customers do not have to wait for parts, and space is available in the warehouse to allow them to stock a wider variety of parts.
As Sauls himself said, “HPE Africa endeavours to ensure that it is always available to offer a personalised and tailor made service for each of its individual clients. The company has 24-hour telephone numbers for parts and field service departments, in order to ensure that the customer gets the exact service that they deserve.”
But HPE Africa doesn’t just see itself as having a responsibility to its customers. The firm also takes seriously its responsibility to the wider community, and they are heavily involved in assisting various charities through a scheme of donations and fund raising events that serve not only to give something back to the community but all to help improve staff morale. In recent years the company has be responsible for helping out charities as varied as Animals in Distress, CANSA, a HIV/AIDS hospice shelter, the Kempton Park Family Upliftment Center, Kind Hearts and Sea Rescue.
This is all in HPE’s past however. The company’s future is set to be bigger and more exciting than ever before. Investment and management company Invicta Holdings, through the Capital Equipment Group of their holding company, Humuani Investments, have recently come to an agreement to acquire 100 percent of HPE Africa’s ordinary share capital.
Tony Sinclair, CEO of CEG, is enthusiastic about the acquisition. Speaking to journalists recently he said, “The acquisition is a strategic investment which will enable Invicta to broaden its product offering to the plant hire, construction, quarrying and mining industries in South Africa and into Africa. The transaction has been approved by the Competition Commission. HPE, the Hyundai earth-moving and construction equipment and spare parts agency for South Africa and surrounding countries, will form part of Invicta’s CEG and will continue to trade as HPE, operating as a separate entity from Invicta’s other related equipment operations.”
HPE Africa may be becoming part of the CEG family, but it’s still firmly maintaining its own identity, and from what we’ve seen that can only be a good thing.
