AGCO unveils 29 Fendt dealers
AGCO unveils 29 Fendt dealers
AGCO now claims to have sorted out its Fendt dealer network. This follows several months of research and apparently, no small amount of head scratching.
In a nutshell, there are now 29 dealers throughout the UK – 18 of which held the Fendt franchise before AGCO acquired the company last year, and 11 new dealers all of which are current Massey Ferguson dealers. Still considered to have low coverage in the north and south-west, the aim is to bring the total to about 35, eventually.
"It has not been an easy task," says sales director, David Sleath. "We had to look closely at the performance of individual Fendt dealers and their geographical position. But above all, we needed to ensure that existing Fendt customers could be properly serviced."
And on this philosophy, AGCO decided to offer the franchise to 11 MF dealers – to create a dual franchise situation. But Mr Sleath is keen to point out this will not be a situation where Fendt tractors are stacked up on a forecourt alongside MF machines.
"These dealers will be running separate and distinctly different businesses," he insists. "A separate sales force and separate, trained service staff."
So, once up and running, how does the new dealer network hope to sell more tractors than the previous Bonhill regime? After all, Bonhill had 30 dealers and managed to sell about 178 units a year.
"We believe that with an improved dealer distribution, particularly in the arable east, and better trained staff, we shall succeed in boosting sales to the 200 mark this year – and that is in a year when tractor sales have not been exactly booming," says Mr Sleath who adds that all new Fendt tractors will be sold with a two-year warranty.
Time will tell, but historically Fendts record in the UK has been remarkably static, at the 120-140 level, for a number of years, with any industry trends having little if any noticeable effect.
Announcement of the new dealer set-up coincides with the official UK launch of the 75-95hp Farmer 300C range and the 170-260hp Favorit 900 Vario range – the latter equipped with stepless hydro-mechanical transmission.
The addition of these two ranges brings the total number of Fendt models available to UK farmers to 45 and should, according to Mr Sleath, cater for the vast majority of requirements.
• A development by Fendt, which appears to have passed relatively unnoticed, is its Fendias diagnostic system which, once plugged into a suitably equipped tractor, reads and assesses the condition of all the machines major components -both as a means of detecting any impending failure and an existing fault.
In the event of a fault a second system – the Fendos – is programmed to identify the correct parts required in respect of chassis number, order and price them, and organise any warranty claims.
Fendts Farmer 300C range is now available in the UK – three models offer power ratings of 75hp, 85hp and 95hp.