Nairobi, Nov 12 (IANS) Tata Africa Holdings (TAH) has entered into franchise agreements with Asian building-equipment makers to distribute their machinery and equipment throughout Africa.
TAH has signed agreements with Hitachi Construction of Japan, India's Aquarius Engineering and Traxbuild of Singapore to start selling their products in Africa in an arrangement that will also see Tata provide after-sales service and parts to customers.
The company will be distributing construction and engineering equipment across Africa, hoping to take advantage of the construction and mining boom currently sweeping across most of the continent.
Also looped into Tata Africa's efforts to grow its business is VT LeeBoy, an American firm owned by VT Systems and specialised in manufacture of building equipment.
TAH, besides selling the products for the companies, will also offer after-sales service and support and sell parts using its various branches and workshops spread across Africa.
In newspaper advertisement placed in Kenyan Newspapers, TAH said it has arranged for financing with local banks to enable interested contractors and builders acquire the machinery in a convenient way, and at competitive prices.
The company, whose headquarters are in Johannesburg, South Africa, will be distributing earth movers, road graders, excavators, backhoe loaders, wheel loaders, batching plants and concrete pumps, among others, thus becoming one of the biggest one-stop shops for construction and building needs in Africa.
TAH, which has 11 subsidiaries in the continent, will use its motor vehicle, mining, engineering and ICT businesses network to make available products in Africa, which is seeing a spurt in huge infrastructural projects with economies growing at an average rate of seven percent over the past three years.
The Indian firm has operations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in the East Africa region, while in southern Africa the company has operations in Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique. In West Africa, it has a presence in Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Its interests, besides automobiles, include mining, as in Kenya where Tata Chemicals is involved in soda ash mining, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Nigeria, and hotels and steel-making in South Africa.
(Maina Waruru can be reached at mainawaruru@gmail.com)
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