Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/732903
EquipmentWorld.com | October 2016 13 reporter | staff report Briefs D escribing itself as "an American company offering construction equipment buyers a revolution- ary and safe way" to buy Chinese equipment, IronDirect has launched its online commerce site irondirect. com, offering products that it says can save owners up to 50 percent of the cost of premium machines over the first life of the machine. Sound familiar? IronDirect has its roots in Interna- tional Construction Products (ICP), a startup announced with great flare during the 2014 ConExpo show, as a way to market value-priced, Chinese- made machines to North American customers. ICP, under the leader- ship of industry veteran Tim Frank, shortly afterwards hit a fatal snag when IronPlanet pulled out of its plans to provide the online platform for ICP. ICP then sued Caterpillar, Volvo and Komatsu, minority owners of IronPlanet, for antitrust, a suit that a federal judge threw out of court this January. All of that is a necessary backdrop to explain the current company's market proposition. This time, the start-up has capital muscle, provided by new owner Liquidity Services, a surplus assets management firm based in Washington, D.C. With Liquid- ity Services' backing, IronDirect has a revamped demonstration area, a 450,000-square-foot parts warehouse, and the essential breathing room to try to prove that its concept – in many ways the same as ICP's – works. The IronDirect pitch: buy equip- ment online, have it serviced how you want and by whom you want, and then use Liquidity Services re- sources to resell it. Buy online Through irondirect.com, the company is initially offering Lonking excava- tors and wheel loaders, and Shantui dozers, along with attachments from Paladin, telehandlers from Magni and undercarriages from Berco. IronDirect says the site will be built around an Amazon-like structure. Fine, but what about what you're buying? For the most part, we're talking about basic, Tier 3 machines, at least through this year. The Chinese manufacturers now involved in Iron- Direct have enough manufacturing credits with the EPA that they won't have to start selling Tier 4 Final ma- IronDirect relies on technology to deliver Chinese-made construction equipment to North America A uction giant Ritchie Bros. has acquired IronPlanet for approximately $758.5 million. When combined, the two com- panies are expected to generate online sales of $3 billion in assets during the 12 months trailing June 30, 2016. The deal will put the combined companies in the top 50 business-to-business ecommerce firms worldwide. Ritchie also announced it has entered into a long term strategic alliance with Caterpillar, in which the company will become Caterpillar's preferred global partner for live onsite and online auctions once the IronPlanet acquisition becomes final. Under a 10-year agreement, Hyundai Heavy Industries will manufacture four compact excavator models for CNH Industrial. In addition, Hyundai will supply kits for another 10 models to be assembled by CNH Industrial, which says the agree- ment will allow it to produce compact excavator models up to 5 tons at its own plants, while sourcing OEM models from Hyundai above 5 tons. The mod- els will be sold under the Case Construction Equipment and New Holland Construction brands and is expected to go on sale in 2017. Volkswagen is taking a 16.6-percent stake in Navistar, investing $256 million in the company and appointing two directors to the Navistar board of directors. Navistar officials say they expect the alliance will generate at least $200 million per year in synergies by the end of five years. Volkswagen owns three major truck brands – Scania, MAN and Volkswagen Caminhoes e Onibus – which operate in European and South American markets. The deal also gives Navistar a source of new diesel engines; the firm has been (continued on page 14) The 3-cubic-yard Lonking CDM835 loader has an operating weight of 27,060 pounds and uses a semi-automatic countershaft powershift transmission.