Paving The Road: GENAVCO

We caught up with, Asif Khan, General Manager GENAVCO, and Saif Khan, Senior Sales Manager GENAVCO, who give us an insight on how the company’s road construction equipment has performed

Picture: Asif Khan, General Manager GENAVCO, and Saif Khan, Senior Sales Manager GENAVCO

GENAVCO was founded in 1967 by His Excellency Juma Al Majid, following the establishment of the Juma Al Majid Group in 1950.

It is one of the leading companies in the UAE for supplying commercial vehicles, road construction equipment, quarry, and mining equipment, material handling equipment, lubricants, and other industrial/construction equipment, representing the world’s leading brands from the USA, Japan, Germany, UK, and France. The group overall has a turnover of an estimated $5.2 billion.

Market Overview for GENAVCO

“We at GENAVCO have three main business verticals which are commercial vehicles, heavy equipment, and BP lubricants,” said Asif Khan, General Manager of Plant & Equipment, GENAVCO.

“Our ability to sustain the business for the past 50 years illustrates the strength of our equipment’s and services,” added Asif

Asif has been part of the company for over 25 years now and has seen massive changes in the company since he joined.

“I have seen the ups and downs in the market. When I initially joined the buyers would have to wait for months to receive equipment, they needed to reserve it in advance.”

In 2019, Asif tells us that the market has picked up and this is mainly due to confidence instilled by the rulers of the UAE which is encouraging businesses and investors in the country.

Saif Khan, senior sales manager of Equipment Business Unit in GENAVCO, elaborates more about the changes he has seen in the last five years.

“In terms of infrastructure, we have seen a lot of new things being developed. The number of new roads and highways are just a few examples of these changes. For us, this is good as we supply the equipment for these projects.”

“We are catering to about six different market segments. By doing so we get to know what is exactly happening with the economy of this country. As a company we know well ahead of time the projects that are coming up, even during the design stages, this is just an illustration of how closely we follow the market,” remarked Asif.

Expo 2020 Dubai has also helped boost GENAVCO business across the different segments. “Again, our machines are being used for constructing roads at the Expo site. Even for the metro station, we are providing equipment for the access platforms, scissor lifts, and boom lifts machinery are supplied by us.”

Road Construction Equipment

Asif says that that road construction equipment is one of their largest market shares. Such equipment’s like Writgen, Hamm, and Vogele are in such high demand in the market.

GENAVCO has been representing WIRTGEN since 2003. WRITGEN as a technological leader, it offers to the customers, mobile machine solutions for road construction and road rehabilitation, as well as for mining and processing minerals.

Since then we had been excelling our market presence and in a short span of time we became the market leaders, with our professional team of sales and after sales, we are maintaining and improving our market share.

“Our WIRTGEN Milling machines had worked on the prestigious airport, highways and internal road projects in the country. All the leading Road contractors are our satisfied fleet users.”

In 1988 GENAVCO started to represent HAMM and with their technologies such as Oscillation, Hammtronic, and HCQ – Hamm Compaction Quality underline HAMM’s high competence and expertise as a manufacturer of compaction equipment.

“We feel proud to say that we are the leading Rollers suppliers to Road Construction Industry in UAE,” said Asif.

GENAVCO is representing Vogele since 1999 and sold the first paver in the year 2000.

“Take Vogele for example. There was not a single Vogele in the market until we started providing it,” said Asif.

Saif elaborated, “These machines are capital equipment with such high value. Any contractor would not invest in a new machine that is brand new to the market. They are used to using certain machines and they are very happy with it. So when we for Vogele it was an uphill task to convince the buyers to take up the machine.”

Saif tells us the importance of using these equipment’s when it comes to road construction.

“In road construction, you first need to remove the road by using the milling machine, then you need a paver to lay the asphalt, then you need rollers to compact it. These machines complement each other in making these roads are built with high quality,” remarked Saif.

After Sales Support Team

One of the key reasons why GENAVCO has continued to succeed is due to their after sales support and spare parts team which is essential when providing this high-value equipment.

“Customers are expecting immediate support. When there is a breakdown are repair team need to immediately fix the problem. The machines itself have a self-diagnostic system in the machine which means when there is a problem the repair team will know exactly what the problem is and will provide the correct replacement parts and which areas they need to repair,” said Saif.

Asif further elaborated, “Today in the asphalt paver business we enjoy roughly about 80% of market share and maintaining that market share means we have to be on top of our game and are after sales support team has helped greatly in maintaining customer confidence.”