GHH: New Ally for the Mexican Mining Sector

Q: What solutions does GHH offer and why do those solutions matter to your clients?
A: GHH provides solutions related to underground mining, tunneling and other heavy-duty industries. We have a strong global presence, with production facilities in Germany, Poland and South Africa. Our product range is diverse; we offer loaders, dump trucks, drill rigs and utility vehicles. It is important to us to provide products that are truly tailored to customer needs to be as fit-for-purpose as possible. Our customers know that our products are high quality and robust, ensuring their use for the long term.

We believe that our equipment can have a great impact on mining operations in various aspects, such as safety, cost and productivity. We have more than 900 employees, of whom more than 150 are  engineers who understand in-depth mining processes and the needs of the market. This is one of our strongest differentiators.

Q: How do you address the challenge of being a global player offering a wide range of products while adapting to the specific needs of customers in Mexico?
A: The key is to understand mining requirements and needs. The Mexican mining market is one of the largest underground mining markets in the world, for which we develop loaders up to 15 tons and trucks from 20 to 42 tons. For us, the Mexican market is very exciting as we have uncovered many needs that could be satisfied with our products.
We tailor our offering to the Mexican reality by applying our learnings from key customer specific applications in places like Southern Africa and Poland where we have specific low profile mining applications with product ranges that we have perfected to support these niche customer operations.

Q: What are the most important differences between your product and alternatives in the market?
A: Our products are developed to very high standards. These products are simple, robust, productive, reliable, durable, cost-effective and easy to maintain. We have developed an amazing line through years of experience and customer feedback. In addition, we truly adapt to the needs of our clients. Some customers are a little afraid of digital devices, so we offer these based on the objectives of the client. We make it work regardless of their openness to digitalization or the problems they may have with their operations. One of our key differentiators is being a complete solution provider, being able to offer all primary equipment like loaders, trucks, rigs and bolters, as well as a complete and comprehensive utility vehicle range.

Our biggest differentiator is being able to closely support customers by tailoring our products and services to their specific requirements. We are agile and adaptive, which allows us to more quickly bring about change and support end user needs. We also have key customer relationships around the world to design machines specifically for their operations.

Q: What is the role of technology and innovation in the company's business?
A: The customer's top priority is being able to safely stay productive while having full-time profitable solutions. As a result, we seek to make our equipment safer and more innovative. New trends are moving toward greater electric and hydrogen solutions, which we are excited to offer to our customers. However, today, the most valuable factor for companies is still the ability of machines to self-diagnose, monitor and remotely track themselves. As a result, we focus on making our mining machines more manageable and efficient in planning mining tasks. We know the needs of customers vary; some want greater security, others focus on productivity or reducing costs. We adapt to the needs of each client and provide them with the best solution.

Q: What are the most important needs that you expect your customers to have in the near future?
A: The main trend for the future is to have more cost-effective and environmentally friendly machines. We are already delivering zero-emission solutions with our electric loaders, which provide the customer with flexibility because their price is competitive, the battery size does not need to be huge and they use electrical cabling as a power source. We are seeing very positive results in Europe. 

Automation is another strong trend in the market. In Europe, we are helping a customer develop a long-term remote, surface operation. Therefore, we are implementing different types of systems, machines and monitoring devices to achieve full automation. It is going to be a long journey but we are very excited to help our client. For this trend, I think the challenge is the ability to introduce reliable and safe technology but also the willingness of companies to adopt these new technologies and educate their staff on the new changes.

In Mexico, these trends are gaining traction, especially automation. It is important to understand that there are different levels of automation and what we have mainly identified in Mexico is that companies are looking for machines that can automatically detect a slowdown or a problem. We see great opportunities in this area.

Q: What do you need to accomplish in Mexico in the next three years to say you were successful?
A: Our company must achieve our previous decent market share and have a strong equipment offering in the market. We want the market to accept our 7-, 10- and 14-ton loaders and 20-, 30- and 42-ton trucks, as we believe they are well suited to the needs of the Mexican market. We also plan to support operations where customers have primary equipment in place with our comprehensive utility vehicle range.

We seek to expand our market share in Mexico through our partnership with Délano Schmidt & Kranz. They understand the mining market and our products. I believe that in the next five years, the Mexican mining market will become one of the Top 3 markets for GHH. Our interest in the country is recent, as we previously focused on Europe and the soft rock market, as well as Southern Africa and the low profile PGM minerals and chrome markets. However, over time, we have developed products for metal mines and the potential in Mexico became a priority. In addition to sales, we want to develop technical expertise in the country. To achieve this, we would like to develop a partnership with a strong mining cluster. However, that would be in the long term.