Dean Gaedtke,
Executive General Manager, Construction
The creation of One Komatsu following the acquisition of Joy Global by Komatsu Ltd will offer enormous benefits for our construction sector customers – something that may not have been immediately obvious to people.
The immediate assumptions were that the new products and solutions we gained through this acquisition were primarily applicable to mining.
However, it has quickly become evident that we now have a greatly enlarged line-up of products, systems and solutions with applications deep into civil construction and quarrying.
These include:
- Access to the world’s leading brand of rock breakers, drill rigs and drifters through our Montabert and Komatsu Black Line ranges.
- Complete crushing and conveying solutions for quarrying and large-scale excavation projects
- A full line-up of underground hard rock mining products with immediate application in the major tunnelling projects underway or in planning around Australia.
- Increased support capabilities across Australia with approximately 1000 more staff, taking our total combined OneKomatsu Australia team to more than 3000 people.
- Increasing our support locations to now 59 locations around Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia.
Montabert products, recognised as the best in the world in terms of quality and durability, open up many new opportunities for us in quarrying, tunnelling and rock excavation applications.
With One Komatsu’s new line of crushing and conveying products, these have typically been seen as products for large port and mining operations.
However, we are beginning to see potential to introduce these products into quarrying and large infrastructure projects – including some unique products that have potential for a number of metropolitan-based deep excavation sites.
Products such as Joy’s line of face shearers, Montabert’s drifter products and related drilling and pinning systems, plus underground hard-rock loaders and haulers. open up new opportunities for our involvement in major underground projects.
Komatsu has been well advanced on automation and semi automation, through such offerings as autonomous mining trucks, and our iMC-equipped dozers and excavators.
Likewise the Joy product lines bring access to its own automated and semi-autonomous underground mining offerings, and the huge safety advantages in underground projects, taking people away from the work areas.
Komatsu will continue to increase our semi-autonomous and total site digital solutions into the civil construction and quarrying sectors.
And through our Joy Global products, we have gained access to very advanced Smart Solutions analytics technology.
As we continue to move into the IoT (internet of things) space, we are seeing an increased demand for single platform offerings of this technology – and it’s not too much of a stretch to see our combined Komatsu and Joy Global offerings moving to a common platform in the future.
For our customers across the various construction industry sectors, the creation of One Komatsu is opening up unique opportunities to take advantage of the most advanced technologies available.