Heavyweight and expanding its reach Hidromek

HEAVYWEIGHT AND

EXPANDING ITS REACH

Turkish company Hidromek is exporting its backhoe loaders and excavators to more than 50 countries on five continents. Felicity Landon reports on its ambitious expansion plans.

Today, Hidromek serves more than 50 countries, but its medium-term target is to reach 70 countries worldwide, as well as increasing its market share in the countries where it is already established. As part of this expansion plan, the Turkish manufacturer of backhoe loaders and hydraulic excavators is looking to increase its dealer network and its network of sales and after-sales offices.

These may seem obvious steps to take, but backing up this geographical expansion, Hidromek plans to increase its product portfolio, and in this way increase sales per customer and increase their loyalty to the Hidromek brand.

“Therefore we are investing in our brand,” says marketing director Levent Karaağaç. “That is why we have joined the Turquality programme.” Turquality is a Turkish government incentive programme which was set up by the foreign trade department, he explains: “Turquality has been described as an innovative, unique model for making global brands out of Turkish products – with the slogan ‘ten world brands from Turkey in ten years’. Hidromek is the only company from the construction machinery sector in Turkey that has joined this programme.”

Continuous growth

Hidromek was established in 1978 as a small workshop for making hydraulic cylinders and backhoe loader attachments for farm tractors. It has seen continuous growth ever since and today it produces two core models of backhoe loaders – the HMK 102B, a rigid chassis machine with 4x4 drive, turbo diesel engine and full power-shift transmission, and the HMK 102S, a 4x4x4 machine with the same engine and transmission, providing four-wheel steering. Both machines can be equipped with many different attachments such as hydraulic breakers, clamshell buckets, grading blades, augers, etc, making them multipurpose machines able to meet different needs.

Another important development in the product range is the new Mini-HMK62SS backhoe loader, a miniature version of the 102B and 102S, but with a hydrostatic powertrain.

Hidromek excavators cover a wide range between 14 and 37 tons, with several attachment applications and also including specialised machines such as material handlers and long-reach excavators.

“We are planning to expand our product portfolio, especially on larger excavators,” says Mr Karaağaç. “We are currently developing a 45 – 50 tonne class crawler excavator, and working on special-purpose excavators such as a demolition machine. We are developing our excavators after detailed studies carried out with machine operators.”

Expanding production

Hidromek has two fabrication plants, an excavator assembly plant and training and after-sales centre in Ankara, and a backhoe loader assembly plant in Izmir. “With the new excavator assembly plant and the extension of our backhoe loader assembly plant, we expanded our total land area to 175,887m2 , and our total production premises now cover 73,497m2,” says Mr Karaağaç.

The company has an annual production capacity of 10,000 construction machines; it is continually expanding its production facilities and technology by investing in automated production, he adds. There has been steady investment in CNC cutting machines, welding robots and special-purpose machining centres. Hidromek uses the most advanced technology in operation in Turkey’s construction machinery sector.

“Hidromek is the country’s leading manufacturing and exporting company in its sector, with aesthetic, ergonomic and world-standard construction machinery,” says Mr Karaağaç. “Our backhoe loaders are entirely designed and manufactured in-house; the quality of our products is ensured by our intensive quality assurance system, and the machines can easily compete with other well-known brands.”

The company already benefits from recent investments and it continues to invest heavily in research and development, he adds. The recent introduction of a new service centre in Ankara and a new office launch in France are improving sales and after-sales power at home and internationally.

“Our backhoe loaders and excavators can serve in many applications, such as infrastructure works, municipality works and major construction projects and mining,” he says.

“The construction and mining sectors in particular are growing day by day.

“With society’s need for more materials and technology and in response to the need for comfort and speed, the application areas for our construction machinery are gradually expanding. They vary from traditional uses such as construction, road building, water conservancy, electric power and mining, to the space-constrained construction sites of cities, agricultural sites in hilly areas, docks, warehouses, gardens, foundations and underground engineering work.

“The machinery is required to extend at both ends, to be compact, large oversize. With the help of large, oversize construction projects, the market demand is increasing for high-tech and high-added-value products from companies with a long record in research, development and manufacture.”

New markets

In Turkey, Hidromek is the market leader, with a 37 per cent share for backhoe loaders and 30 per cent share for wheeled excavators. It is also a top four company for crawler excavators and has ambitions to step up to market leader in this sector too.

Outside Turkey, the company manages its European operations from is own sales and after-sales service centre in Barcelona. Its dealer network now numbers 28 in Spain alone, and it is now expanding its dealership network in Portugal, France and across Europe. “Furthermore, our company is increasingly busy in the Middle East,” says Mr Karaağaç.

He says Russia has important potential for the company – obviously because it is nearby, but also because a large number of Turkish contractors have projects in that region, and infrastructure works and mining are rapidly increasing there. It is stepping up the number of dealers in Russia, and also expanding in CIS countries such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

“Our target is to stay market leader in Turkey in every construction machinery product that we sell – and to increase our market share in Europe, with the vision of being a ‘world brand’ in the very near future. We are a company with an exciting future, and our growing order book supports our optimism in the marketplace.” n