The National Diesel Dirt and Turf Expo was the place to be in April if you were looking for the latest construction, road building and lawn maintenance equipment. It was a massive show covering a vast area at the Sydney Dragway in Eastern Creek.
One of the biggest displays was XCMG (Xuzhou Construction Mining Group Co., Ltd) with a large number of machines on show from the small excavators to the largest graders. XCMG is a Chinese company that started in 1943 and has been number one in China for over 32 years. It now operates in 143 countries including Australia.
We spoke to Roy Rossini, General Manager at XCMG Construction and Mining in Australia, about the show and success they are having in Australia with their products.
“It’s the third largest construction manufacturer in the world behind CAT and Komatsu,” explained Rossini.
“They’ve been in Australia for about 15 years, in and out with different forms and machinery, but they’ve never set up as an entity in Australia. We’ve currently have some dealings with Rio Tinto and there’s been a joint venture in development over the last few years, and a couple of other mining companies who we have sold into like BHP and Cu-River Mining in South Australia.”
“About three years ago, they approached me to set up in Australia. I’ve been in the industry for 40 years, through different companies. So we set it up in Australia and started with just myself and a container of machines. We made some changes in machinery so it suited our environment and met Australian standards.”
“Now we’re at a place, 12 months into it, and we’ve finished our development on a lot of the mini excavators. And then the next 12 months we sold 1,100 units. We’re still continuing that scale at the moment, we’ve got about 1,300 line items on the ground, ready for sale. I’ve got a distribution network of about 17 dealers around the country. Now, this has all been developed really in the last few years.”
“Dealers do to the servicing and the maintenance. We’ve got a head office in Melbourne national distribution center of spare parts. All the dealers are stocked with machinery. We supply technical support and backup to the dealers, and training.”
We asked Rossini about the product range and the differences with XCMG products compared to some local favourites.
“We’re now we’re pushing into the mining sector. So in the mining sector we actually do from 1.7 tonne mini excavators through to 700 tonne. A lot of big trucks, up to 400 tonne, the biggest in the world. So that’s our our next push.”
“With all our products, the major components are a common denominator components. So we use a lot of Kubota and Cummins engines; common pumps that everybody uses. There’s nothing untoward about the products we put in the machine. They all come with full warranties, backup and service.”
“Also, what we’d like to think is that, when we need something changed, we need to improve something, or our R&D reacts to something. They do it instantly. There’s no waiting time. So we can simply say, you know, this switch in this position or this joystick is not quite right. We need a different size and we need that to be in another place. That is done on the next batch of equipment that comes to Australia.”
There weren’t many electric powered machines at the expo, so we asked what the plans were for XCMG to introduce zero emissions excavators and mining equipment.
“We’ve got a big Go Green push in the world market,” confirmed Rossini. “Actually at the moment, we’ve got some excavators which are battery operated. We’ve got a wheel loader, which unfortunately, didn’t show up in time for the expo. It’s on the wharf. The first of that size in the world.”
“We also do battery road trucks as well. We do battery mining trucks. And that’s developing as we go. There’s actually quite a range we’re filling in that scale. All the big stuff, we already do electrics with cabling. In the 700 tonne escalators for example, 300 tonne, they can be cabled. So already have it. So there’s no indifference between us in some of the others, in actual fact we’re a bit ahead.”
