MACHINERY dealer Sellars Agriculture is making its first foray into the construction market after being awarded the exclusive Scottish dealership for the Kato Imer range of mini-excavators, tracked dumpers and skid steer loaders.
Founded in 2004, Sellars has six mainline depots – Forres; Huntly; Oldmeldrum; Letham; Perth; and Cupar – and two service depots – Linlithgow and Invergordon.
The firm had been on the lookout for an additional income stream, managing director Neil Wattie told Project Plant, and the Kato Imer brand was ‘absolutely ideal’.
“We had been looking at construction equipment… and we suddenly came across Kato Imer. They only came on the market about 2017, so they haven’t been trading that long in the UK,” Neil explained.
The Japanese-owned Kato Imer brand offers a range of mini-excavators from 0.9 to 8.5 tonnes with zero tail swing, short tail swing and traditional; tracked dumpers with payloads of 400kg to 11,000kg; and both wheeled and tracked skid steer loaders with operating loads ranging from 330kg to 1,040kg.
The range comes with a five-year warranty, which Neil reckons will help the brand stand out, describing it as one of Kato Imer’s ‘main plus points’. He continued, “We started chatting to them and after a period of time we were awarded the franchise for the whole of Scotland, which is absolutely ideal because we’ve got six mainline depots and two service depots and we can get them over the whole area, which was a huge plus for us.
“We think it’s a good product and has a lot to offer.”
Although the construction market is a completely new venture for Sellars, Neil believes the firm has a very good network and is experienced in selling and fixing machines. “It’s to expand and grow really,” he continued. “We started in 2004 and we’ve built the business up. We have a good, strong balance sheet, and we think this is a good way to increase the business because we can’t get any more area for what we sell; we’ve got this fixed area, so the idea is to get some more products to sell in.”
Neil sees construction as a ‘really good add-on’ for the business but noted that it will be a completely different customer base, which will be a big change.
“It’ll be hard work to try and do it, but it’s a challenge and I think we’ve got a good product to achieve growth,” he added.
Sam Edwards, director at Kato Imer said the brand benchmarks itself against other Japanese competitors. “We use the same engines and pumps, so we use Kubota or Yanmar engines. If you look at like-for-like products, they’re almost identical.”
Sam also echoed Neil’s comment about Kato Imer’s five-year warranty. “Not only do we have a great product that is shipped over from Japan, but also a five-year warranty as standard on all our machines. That isn’t a degrading warranty, so it means from the minute you take it from the dealership and you take it back to your site, right up until the fifth year mark, your machine is covered exactly the same all the way through – and that goes for hydraulic hoses, it goes for pumps; absolutely everything on the machine.
“That’s what sets us apart from all the other competition,” he said.
Kato Imer started making inroads in the UK in late 2017 and early 2018. Sam explained, “We brought in the parts and service first before bringing in the sales because it was fundamental for me that we had the parts on the shelf, the service ready to go, before we brought in machines.”
With everything now in place, it was important to Kato Imer that its representative north of the border could provide the service and support the brand prides itself on. “It took us a long time to get a relationship with Sellars,” Sam said.
“We went through a long period of procurement with them so that we understood their response times, we understood their customer service; there had to be synergies between the two businesses otherwise it simply wasn’t viable.
“The Scottish market is incredibly important to us and we feel that having Sellars on board gives us a great partnership to break into the Scottish market.
“The biggest thing I would like to put across, and especially to everybody in Scotland, is that we are serious, we’re here to stay, we’re here to play the game. We take Scotland as a market extremely seriously.”
