Bell Equipment Group has reached an agreement to distribute and support the JCB Agriculture product range in South Africa. Coinciding with this announcement, and to bring the desired focus on meeting their customers’ needs, Bell Equipment has established a separate business unit – Bell Equipment Forestry & Agriculture – to service these segments.

According to Bell Equipment Director for Products and Marketing, Stephen Jones, the JCB Agriculture product range strengthens Bell’s focus on servicing farming customers in South Africa. He said that JCB wanted to partner with a recognised local brand that would have the ability to provide countrywide support for agriculture customers for the long term.

“Both Bell and JCB started their respective businesses servicing users of material handling equipment in the agriculture industry, and we understand that the business requirements, market demands, and customer expectations of these customers are distinctly different to those of the mining and construction industries,” said Stephen.

“Our objective is to earn the support of the farming community through focus and the addition of tailored solutions for broader on-farm material handling provided by JCB Agriculture. Coupled with Bell’s existing product line, focused predominantly on sugar cane farmers and timber growers, we believe this presents an extremely appealing option for the agricultural industry,” he said.

“The current Bell agriculture products are primarily focused on the sugar and forestry industries with haulers, loaders, skidders, feller bunchers and grapples from both the traditional Bell line as well as the Matriarch brand. We intend to increase focus on these lines by placing all product that will service this customer segment under the Bell Forestry and Agriculture brand.”

Bell Forestry and Agriculture will operate separately from Bell Equipment Sales South Africa, which is focused on the mining and construction industries, but will continue to use certain BESSA branches as selling and servicing agents where it makes sense, and they are well positioned to service local farmers.

In other areas across the country Bell Forestry and Agriculture is actively looking for locally based partners to ensure in-community support of farmers for both the Bell and JCB ranges of agriculture products.

Both the Bell Equipment Forestry and Agriculture range and the JCB Agriculture range were on show at NAMPO in Bothaville in May.

Find our more: www.bellequipment.com/forestryag