Dressta seek greater dealership reach in key emerging markets to boost sales

3420 Dressta, the 269 LiuGong subsidiary, is striving to increase its dealership reach in key emerging markets such as Central and South America as it aims for higher machine sales.

Speaking at a recent Dressta construction machine manufacturing press event at the company’s LiuGong-owned manufacturing plant and headquarters in Stalowa Wola, southern Poland, Dressta CEO Leslaw Holysz said, “We have no [dealership] presence in Mexico and Latin America, except for Panama. Panama is a very good country for us and we sold a lot of equipment this year. Mexico, Peru, and Chile – they should be open [to us]. I know that LiuGong has very good partners there, so we really hope that we will be able to sell our TD-40E’s and TD-25M’s [crawler dozers] to these countries.”

Holysz said that Dressta continued to have good dealerships in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union countries, Poland and Central Europe. “We also have good dealers in Asia-Pacific, and very good dealers in Ethiopia and South Africa, but this is not enough. We need more sales and you cannot sell more machines without good dealers,” he added.

Plans to bolster Dressta and LiuGong’s global dealership presence are, said Holysz, in the process of being agreed. “We are encouraging LiuGong dealers to come to us, and for Dressta dealers to sell some LiuGong equipment. Some Dressta dealers are interested in selling some LiuGong wheeled loaders and excavators. Some dealers in Kazakhstan and Russia and in other countries are interested in adding LiuGong excavators to their [dealership] programme.”

Despite a drop in H1 2013 sales and revenue compared to the same period of 2012, Holysz said Dressta had achieved its first machine sales to customers in England and France. He said that Germany was a “very tough market” for Dressta to break into. “The expectations of the customers and dealers are very high, so we have to be prepared for the high expectations.”

Asked during the same press event to identify Dressta’s key problem and how it can be overcome, David Beatenbough, LiuGong’s vice president, said, “The first international harvester bulldozers were built in the 1930s, and our [Dressta’s] history goes back to that. The technology that we use in our current [bulldozer] machine also has elements that go all the way back to that. But, in the past years, through many of the changes in HSW, and as LiuGong has acquired the company, many people have forgotten who Dressta is. For me, the most critical thing is to get our heritage, our quality and our machines well-known again so people can remember our strengths.”

Beatenbough said that LiuGong is keen to balance LiuGong and Dressta-branded machine production levels in Stalowa Wola. “One of the important reasons we invested in Poland was to give us a European base of operations. In order to be successful long-term, we need to have factories running at full capacity. Being able to produce LiuGong machines in Poland allows us to have much stronger support capability: parts are that much closer; everything is better for the customer.”

Of other LiuGong Poland investment reasons, Beatenbough added, “Probably the most important reason was the understanding of quality that people in this factory have. I truly believe that our quality is second to none in the world, in terms of what we build here. The machine designs are stable, work well and are reliable. We have machines working all over the world in very difficult applications. From a quality standpoint, we’re at the top.”

During the Dressta press event, the full range of Dressta crawler bulldozers – including the TD-40E Extra (pictured), wheeled loaders, pipelayers and backhoe loaders, all manufactured in Stalowa Wola, around 250km south-east of Warsaw, were showcased to a large gathering of international construction machine manufacturing industry journalists.