Quest for quality increasingly leads customers to our company

Dries Vangaever and his team are busier than ever: "The Corona crisis has had no impact at Attachments Technology International in Belgium, quite the contrary I would say. We are very busy, with orders coming in from everywhere. Neighboring countries like Germany, Sweden and Switzerland are still in our top 5, but suddenly the orders are really coming from far away: Nigeria, Dubai, even from Illes de Réunion in the Indian Ocean!"

From orders from all over the world, Dries can only draw one conclusion: "Customers are looking for quality again. Where it used to be just about price, I see the trend toward quality attachments increasing." That is not only very plausible, it also shows that "An expensive machine must not come to a standstill because of a broken attachment, people don't put up with that anymore."

ATTEC has more than 3,000 dealers worldwide and that is now paying off. They are mostly brand dealers of JCB, Bobcat, Case..." They buy from us because a brand doesn't have a certain attachment in the range or can't help the customer with the size of bucket they want. The delivery time can also be too long and, of course, they sometimes come to us because we are cheaper," explains Dries, explaining the growing interest.

Own development

ATTEC has many years of experience in in-house development and construction of attachments for all makes and compact equipment. Some successful products are its own inventions. Dries is rightly proud of that: "My father Marc is the inventor of the sweeper brush on a skid-steer loader, still one of our best-selling attachments. I myself invented the screening bucket for on mini excavators. It sorts three different sizes of stone dust without hydraulic components. An article about that already appeared in this magazine two years ago."(June 21, 2019: Continuing to innovate creates top product again).

Topical example of the power of in-house development, Dries mentions the thumb clip for mini excavators. "Many brands do not have this, while it is an indispensable tool. We have already developed and built thumb clamps for brands such as Bobcat, Terex, Komatsu and Caterpillar."

Quality Differences

"I have to admit that our team sometimes stands around chuckling at trade shows at some attachments ... the plate thickness, the ground blades, the welding, the components used ... But customers are starting to realize that there are indeed big differences in attachments," is how Dries explains his statement that "the search for quality increasingly leads customers to ATTEC International." He continues: "Because we make everything in-house, we also have full control over quality and production times. Which, by the way, has always been a hallmark of our company. Another feature is our service and accessibility. Our sales and engineering departments communicate directly with our dealers. If a dealer does not know whether a certain attachment will work on a certain machine, we find out for him. We match the hydraulics to the machine and not the other way around."

Client withholds good care

The fact that at ATTEC the customer is central is not an empty slogan, Dries emphasizes, "I myself always say: you must help your customer, even if that means sending him to a competitor because we do not produce a certain attachment. The customer never forgets that." But that is not yet the whole story: "I am convinced, that the Corona crisis makes our customers think whether producing abroad still pays off. Yes, they can weld cheaper there than we can, but as soon as an attachment becomes complicated and involves hydraulics, the price difference is sometimes surprising. Labor and energy costs are also rising abroad and import duties, taxes, transport prices are skyrocketing... Not to mention the ecological footprint of all that transport. I notice that already, customers come to us for that reason too."

Expand further

Dries Vangaever's company is located in Markegem, halfway between Ghent and Kortrijk. ATTEC - read: Attachment technology - has been producing attachments for construction machines of various brands for more than forty years. "It is unavoidable that the enormous rush will encourage further growth," Dries concludes. "To cope with that growth, we are investing in a number of new machines this year, including a plate shearer and a tube splitter. We also recently hired two new production workers. We are also still looking for a technical draughtsman and commercial clerk, to provide even better service to our dealers."