FEBRUARY 2022 marked the tenth anniversary of Rand Air’s Northern Cape Kathu Depot. This is also a celebration of the dedicated and passionate Kathu team and the Depot’s exponential growth over the past five years. The can-do attitude of Sales Representative, Denise Olivier, and skilled technicians Joseph Masiga, Lekunutu Tlhasedi, Nicholaas de Koker, Reuben Nkosi and Trevor Mpikwane has seen the Depot reaching several milestones.
The customer base has grown ten-fold and in 2017, turnover increased by 85% and the ‘Depot of the Year’ title was clinched. The success story of this remarkable team continues with Denise achieving the 2018 ‘Sales Rep of the Year’ award and in 2021 the Depot recorded its best revenue year.
“Securing new market sectors and keeping existing customers satisfied can be particularly challenging in this territory,” notes Denise.
“Alongside the remote locations of most of the plants, tight mine security makes customer visits very difficult. I was initially given a customers’ list but I did my own research and drove around trying to spot dust-clouds because then I knew that it was a mining operation and a potential customer.”
Denise also made sure that she brushed up on her product knowledge.
To meet customer demand, it was not long before the Kathu Depot’s rental fleet expanded by some 600% comprising a variety of Atlas Copco mobile generators and air compressors. Pumps were added in 2021 and the lighting plants fleet will soon be boosted with Atlas Copco’s latest LED light towers.
“We support exploration drilling, a key sector of our long-term business, with high-pressure 25bar Atlas Copco compressors,” says Denise, who was responsible for adding solar plants to the Depot’s customer base. She explains that this is a fluctuating business as the solar plants rent mobile oil-free electric compressors during commissioning and testing phases. Denise and her team also supply short-term machine rentals to contractors during on-site work.
“As downtime is simply not an option for our customers, we couple our next-level after-market service package to our quality, robust and efficient Atlas Copco rental products. But I would not be able to achieve any of this without my professional team who ensures that our customers’ machines are maintained regularly.”
Denise reveals that the Kathu Depot’s footprint was recently expanded into Namibia.
“I have already started doing my research and my team and I are extremely excited to forge new rental customers in this country and to take the Kathu Depot to even greater heights in setting the rental benchmark!”
