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Extec/Fintec integration opens up new customer segment for Sandvik

Sandvik Mining and Construction’s recent four-day customer event at the company’s Swadlincote factory, in conjunction with associated live machinery demonstrations at Armac’s recycling centre near Birmingham airport, not only formally marked the full integration and rebranding of the Extec and Fintec products lines as part of Sandvik’s product offering, but also served as a platform to create a greater customer awareness of the company’s wider product portfolio and latest offerings and innovations among the 1,000+ visitors who attended from all around the world.

Since Sandvik’s acquisition of Extec Screens and Crushers Ltd and Fintec Crushing and Screening Ltd in the spring of 2007, new opportunities have opened up for all the parties involved. The former Extec and Fintec businesses are now benefiting from Sandvik’s global resources and advanced crushing and screening technology, as well as greater access to key quarry and mining customers, while Sandvik have gained access to a large and growing group of contractor customers, in addition to their traditional customer base.

Moreover, the addition of Fintec and Extec’s complementary mid-size and light equipment to Sandvik’s existing ‘heavier end’ customer offering has effectively strengthened Sandvik’s market position and added greater weight to the company’s strategic ambition to be the leading supplier of mobile crushing and screening equipment to the mining and construction sectors – a target market with a potential global value in excess of €2 billion per annum.  

Although Sandvik’s traditional business area largely consists of customers who are not contractors, Duncan McGregor (pictured below), vice-president of Sandvik’s global construction product line, insists the company has the right background to address the needs of this particular customer segment, which has become a major part of the materials processing business all over the world. ‘We will learn from Extec and Fintec, who have provided us with access to a segment that we were not able to reach before,’ he said. ‘The contractor business follows its own special business logic, very well matched by a distribution strategy, and we need to understand how to serve this segment in the best possible way.’

Mr McGregor admitted that customer expectations would undoubtedly increase following the acquisitions and rebranding, but said that one of the biggest advantages of bringing Fintec and Extec together under Sandvik would be an increased global presence, particularly in terms of worldwide distribution and improved aftermarket support. ‘We will have to live up to these expectations,’ he commented, ‘but we have a reputation for advanced engineering and aftermarket customer service that is the envy of every construction equipment manufacturer in the world.’

And he added that whereas in the past Sandvik’s customer focus had been very much applications based, the company had now adopted a new approach with the emphasis firmly on the products and equipment and their associated wear parts and spare parts. As part of this realignment, Mr McGregor explained that Sandvik Mining and Construction’s five former customer segments had been reduced to three, creating a lighter structure. Moreover, he said that rather than selling through dealers, Sandvik had traditionally taken the direct sales approach in the UK, which provided much more scope for direct contact with customers.

Unified range

Sandvik’s decision to unify their entire mobile crushing and screening range under a single brand, as signified by the new Sandvik-style model nomenclature  and Sandvik machine colours (see QM, June 2009 for further details), is designed to increase customer awareness of the company’s full offering, while at the same time helping Sandvik improve and broaden their services to a variety of customers by using the extended breadth of the organization. Nevertheless, the company is keen to stress that, in effect, the Extec and Fintec products will still be there, and the features and benefits that have made them world leaders will be incorporated into the new product offering. Mr McGregor added that, while it was undoubtedly challenging for Extec and Fintec to lose their identities, this change was now being seen in positive light.

The recent global customer event, which took place at the end of June, provided an ideal opportunity for Sandvik to mark the official world-wide launch of the rebranded product line-up, as well as allowing the company to introduce the Extec and Fintec customer base to the wider product offering within the Sandvik family. ‘We needed an occasion that would highlight just how important mobile crushing and screening is to Sandvik, and to show that Sandvik now leads the world in this area,’ explained Mr McGregor. ‘And with our recent de-stocking activity coming to an end, this was seen as the perfect time for the rebranding and change of livery, as the integration would have been very difficult to achieve had we been running flat out.    

‘We also wanted to show that, with the addition of the lighter mobiles to Sandvik’s existing family of products, we no longer have any major gaps in our product range, and that by moving to a single brand we will have more opportunities to supply ‘bundles’ of equipment to customers. Our focus now will be on strengthening and consolidating the product lines that we already have,’ he said.

During the customer event, attendees were able to witness live-action demonstrations of some of the newly integrated mobile screening and crushing equipment in typical quarrying and recycling configurations. The quarry demonstration line-up comprised a QJ340 (C-12+) tracked jaw crusher, feeding a QH330 (F1080) tracked cone crusher, which, in turn, fed directly into a QA450 (S-7) tracked triple-deck screener to produce three concrete aggregates. Meanwhile, the recycling demonstration comprised a QE330 (F640) tracked scalper, a QA330 (F542) double-deck tracked screen, and a QI430 (F1440) tracked impact crusher feeding into a QA440 (S-6) tracked doublescreen to produce five products from a variety of feed materials.

However, the event was not limited solely to mobile crushing and screening, as its other major purpose was to highlight the wider product range Sandvik has to offer, such as drill rigs, tools, breakers and static crushing plants. Many of these products also possess attributes that are well suited to the ‘newly acquired’ contractor segment and, in order to provide an overview of the full product offering, numerous machines and equipment lines were shown on static display at the factory, including a UH440i tracked cone crusher and a DP1500i (TIC) drill rig, one of a range of Sandvik top-hammer units that the company believes will start to challenge the dominance of down-the-hole rigs in the UK (further details of which will appear in a forthcoming edition of QM).

The occasion was also used to mark the worldwide launch of a number of brand new Sandvik products and technological developments, including: the 36-tonne QE440 (E-8), a high-capacity tracked scalping and screening system; the mid-range BR2577 hydraulic breaker, which offers a wide variety of retrofit options; and the Flexifeed FF mantle, a unique and innovative development from Sandvik for use on their CH440 cone crusher (see panel for further details).

As well as the live demonstrations and static displays, visitors were taken on a tour of Sandvik’s Swadlincote factory. The former Extec headquarters is now not only Sandvik’s global centre of excellence for mobile crushing and screening, with state-of-the-art production and engineering facilities, but also the main centre for Sandvik Mining and Construction within the UK and Ireland. As expected, a major point of interest proved to be the global aftermarket centre, where visitors were shown the full capability of Sandvik’s parts and service operation, together with the newly operational Global Customer Service Centre.

As part of their commitment to aftermarket support, Sandvik have invested heavily in this area of their operations and are currently in the process of completing the rationalization of the former Extec and Fintec spare part product purchasing specifications by merging them into a single Sandvik line. A 30,000ft2 spares warehouse holding over 3,000 key product lines ensures that any parts that may be needed are available quickly and cost-effectively, and for improved customer service, this facility is now equipped with its own discrete purchasing section, so that this area of operations is no longer a function of the production department. In addition, improved packaging and more rigorous checking procedures have been implemented to further improve and enhance the level of customer support available from Sandvik Mining and Construction.