The new reality of the market

Manufacturers and dealers find in aftersales a way to overcome the crisis, highlighting preventive maintenance and looking for differentials in attendance

The general performance of equipment market is starting to feel the consequences—still in a quite subtle way—of the retaking from Brazilian economy. The scenario starts to show new colors in the horizon, even being unstable, mostly in political subjects.

This is being noticed by several executives of the area that now are looking for the actions needed to allow them not to take their breath away when the movement of recovery is becoming more consistent. The CEO from Tracbel, Luiz Gustavo Pereira, is one of the leaders of this renewal of the industry mind. “A very large reduction in the sales of new machines occurred in 2016, increasing highly the demand of aftersales areas”, says him. “Consequently, the importance of this area is currently much higher than it was before. It increased a lot and is sustaining the industry.”

Mainly due to this new market reality, featured by equipment with higher time of work (and whose average age increased around two years above that practiced till 2014), aftersales found in the crisis a unique opportunity for flourishing, even because they are more and more demanded by the clients about this subject. Tracbel was one of these companies that took more profit with this momentum, as shows the recent inauguration of a new part distribution center in Bebedouro (SP), which was planned some years ago by the company and that was not impacted by the crisis. According to Pereira, agriculture and especially sugarcane areas attracted the attention of the company to the region, “where the lack of an exclusive unit was felt many years ago”. “For those who are capitalized or at least have well-balanced accounts, the crisis creates a lot of opportunities”, says the executive.

Considering the business shrinkage—estimated in 40 percent between 2014 and 2015, and more 40 percent in the subsequent period—Pereira estimates that Brazilian market has currently the same dimensions that it had three years ago. “Sales dropped from approximately 17 thousand units in 2014 to just 6 thousand units in 2016”, regrets him. “I understand that—at that time—the market was too inflated, it was not real. But the breaking was too sharp and opened aftersales as an opportunity of recovery and recapitalization.”