Improving performance for Hyundai

Hyundai has seen strong sales in Europe 2015 and expects the growth trend to continue in 2016. Alain Worp, sales director for construction equipment at HHIE, says the company is also investing €30 million in building a new headquarters in Belgium, with its warehouse alone covering 13,000m2. “This project is expected to be finished by the end of 2016. It will be almost four times as big as the present facility,” he said.
April 12, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Hyundai’s European sales director Alain Worp discussed the firm’s strong performance in Europe

236 Hyundai has seen strong sales in Europe 2015 and expects the growth trend to continue in 2016. Alain Worp, sales director for construction equipment at HHIE, says the company is also investing €30 million in building a new headquarters in Belgium, with its warehouse alone covering 13,000m2. “This project is expected to be finished by the end of 2016. It will be almost four times as big as the present facility,” he said.

He continued, “Last year was very good. We sold more than 8,000 units and we had a turnover of €216 million, which was a record.”

He added, “We consolidated sales for our heavy machines of 10tonnes and above.”

The firm’s performance in the excavator market has been particularly good, although it has also seen steadily growing sales for wheeled loaders and mini excavators. Worp is also confident that this sales trend will continue in 2016 and said, “We aim for a 15% increase in construction equipment and for spares, we aim for an ambitious 17% while we will invest in our mini excavator business.”

The strongest markets for Hyundai in Europe were Germany, the UK and France but the firm has also seen an improvement in its performance in Southern Europe. Worp said, “It is getting better. After six years of decline the bottom has been reached and demand is increasing.” He added that demand in Spain and Portugal has seen an upswing while Italy is “modestly positive and a 10-15% increase is a fair estimate for last year and this year”.

The firm has new machines coming to market and a spokesperson for Hyundai said, “It’s not just an update of the engines.”

Hydraulics, controls and electronics have been improved as well as the machines having Stage IV compliant diesels and the spokesperson added, “We see increased fuel efficiency of up to 15%.”

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