Five Doosan ADTs were recently delivered to work on challenging material handling applications in South Africa.

DISA Equipment, operating as Doosan South Africa, the authorised dealer for Doosan in South Africa, continues to roll out several of its Doosan articulated dump trucks (ADTs) onto local South African sites.

The company has recorded several package deals over the past few months, but of note is the growing uptake of its ADT range locally. The ADT marketplace is a competitive market segment with several of the established ADT brands consolidating a sizeable share of the market.

Chris Whitehead, managing director of Doosan South Africa, agrees that this is a challenging market to enter as owners of this range of equipment are generally brand loyal due to the investments they have made over the years. But, he is convinced that Doosan will continue to make inroads into this market with several units recently rolling onto sites.

A North-West based transport and materials handling company recently took delivery of two Doosan ADTs from DISA Equipment. This was complemented by five wheel loaders and a single excavator in a space of a year. “The machines are working in a demanding 24/7 ferrochrome slag handling application. Having achieved close on 6 000 hours in 11 months the customer is more than satisfied with the performance of the equipment,” says Whitehead.

When he took over early this year, Whitehead reiterated his intentions to further grow the population of the Doosan ADT range. At the time he told Equipment Africa that Doosan was relatively a new player in the ADT market, but has a good match between its wheel loaders, excavators and ADTS.

Over the years, traditional big markets for Doosan have always been general construction, plant hire and scrap handling. In the medium term, Whitehead plans to make strong inroads into the larger excavator and wheel loader markets, while in the long term, focus will be on moving more of the company’s articulated haulers, which comprise 30t and 40t models. These plans seem to have been well set into motion, especially on the back of the recent deals which saw a number of Doosan articulated haulers rolling onto sites.

Equipment Africa says: When we initially spoke to Whitehead at the start of his managing directorship earlier this year, moving more ADT volumes was only a long-term objective. These plans seem to be coming to fruition earlier than expected for several reasons. Within the first few months in charge, Whitehead has succeeded in creating a customer-centric organisation that continues to leverage on the quality of Korean build, competitive pricing and strong aftermarket support to offer customers a total cost-effective equipment solution.