The past three or four years have seen a steady rise in Reid & Mitchell’s business with Komatsu, based mainly on the repair services it provides on Komatsu dump truck fleets owned and operated by its many opencast mining customers.
“Komatsu is now our single largest customer, thanks to the increased business we have with them in servicing and repairing key electrical equipment used in the Komatsu off-road dump trucks deployed in opencast mining operations throughout Southern Africa” said Mike Shaw, R&M’s Divisional CEO.
The electrical equipment used in Komatsu trucks and other makes of dump trucks of similar size comprise electric wheel-motors, alternators and grid blower motors. R&M provides a full suite of refurbishment options to Komatsu for this range of equipment.
“Since Komatsu takes responsibility for installing and commissioning the replacement units, they approached us recently to ask us to provide training to some of their electro-mechanical millwright apprentices, who upon qualifying will join Komatsu’s field service teams,” Mike stated.
“It is to our benefit that the Komatsu field service teams have the appropriate level of electrical skills to help support our equipment on site to maximise the operational performance levels for the end clients.
“We agreed to do so and have so far trained two of their apprentices for four weeks in March this year. This training forms part of the practical training that the apprentices are required to do in terms of their apprenticeships,” he explained, adding that R&M is due to provide on-the-job training to more millwright apprentices from Komatsu in the near future.
