JOHN Deere customers in WA who dealt with Ag Implements should notice little difference at their local dealerships following on July 16 completed acquisition by AFGRI Equipment Australia.
Keen to set the public record straight on what AFGRI's intentions are for the six Ag Implements dealerships it acquired, two of its directors explained the transition should be "seamless" for customers.
"With the acquisition, we will try and keep as close as we can to the current arrangements," said Gollie Coetzee, AFGRI Equipment Australia's operations director.
"In that sense, customers should not really face anything different than they have in the past, because it's going to be the same branch and the same staff they have been dealing with over the years," Mr Coetzee said.
Mr Coetzee and commercial director Wessel Oosthuizen pointed out that apart from Ag Implements' head office staff, all rural dealership staff were offered a job and all but four had accepted and come across to AFGRI and would remain at their current locations.
AFGRI directors met with Ag Implements staff last week to reassure them of the company's intentions.
Group managers will be meeting with them this week.
"We've just finished the acquisition, so the idea now is to meet with staff to ascertain what works and what doesn't work and find solutions for the problems," Mr Coetzee said.
"Our philosophy is don't try to fix what isn't broken."
"We (AFGRI and Ag Implements) use the same business systems and the same John Deere systems, so staff will be doing exactly the same next week as they were doing last week," Mr Oosthuizen said.
The Ag Implements dealerships will continue as they are in the same locations, with AFGRI renting the premises from John Nicoletti, while its own 13 dealerships will also continue, Mr Coetzee and Mr Oosthuizen said.
AFGRI will also keep Ag Implements' warehouse facility at Northam and continue to operate it in conjunction with its own warehouse at its South Guildford headquarters.
"It doesn't matter whether its parts, service, sales, management, from a company perspective we are a strong believer we don't manage a branch out of Perth," Mr Coetzee said.
"Each branch will continue to assess and order what it needs.
"The decisions that were made at branch level regarding what stock to carry will still be made at the branch.
"The benefit for customers is that we can offer technical support when it is needed, from Perth.
"If a customer is down and the local branch cannot support it, we will send a specialist from Perth.
"It's mostly for diagnostic purposes, all our staff are competent and highly trained, but on the diagnostic side they sometimes need support and that's where we come in with head office support."
Mr Oosthuizen said all John Deere dealerships operated to corporate standards so there was no need to upgrade the Ag Implements' facilities, apart from plans to provide each workshop with more specialised tools.
Price changes are also not part of the plan, he said.
"Despite the perceptions some may have, John Deere dealers have exactly the same pricing on the same products," Mr Oosthuizen said.
"Our price list and theirs are exactly the same, so there will be no change."
Areas where there will be change across the expanded group, Mr Oosthuizen and Mr Coetzee said, were in replenishing staff levels and training of technicians.
AFGRI last week launched a recruitment drive and is hoping to attract at least 35 people across different roles.
"I don't think it's a secret in rural Australia that skilled staff are a very scarce commodity," Mr Coetzee said.
"We will be looking for spare parts employees as well as try and recruit 10 parts trainees in 2022 and we will also look at recruiting more sales people - many of them will be for the six branches we have acquired.
"In principle, if we could get more technicians tomorrow we will take them all, but we know they are not available anywhere in Australia.
"So that is why we are training apprentices to create supply of technicians to our business."
AFGRI plans to increase its annual intake of apprentices at its Apprentice Academy, run in conjunction with Moora TAFE.
From next January it hopes to take on 35 apprentices a year and is working with local schools to achieve this target.
It already has a total of 75 first, second and third-year apprentices in training and expects 15 of them to graduate this year.
"We will try to keep the level at 100 apprentices in our training system from next year," Mr Coetzee said.
Apart from TAFE, AGFRI also runs in-house training which is supervised by its own team of five advisors who are qualified as John Deere certified instructors.
In-house training also includes online access to the John Deere University.
Reducing risk of AFGRI's existing operation by spreading inventories across more outlets in different locations, maintaining the John Deere market share in WA and, through economies of scale, providing a better service across a wider area to more customers was the rationale behind the acquisition, Mr Coetzee and Mr Oosthuizen explained.
With remote monitoring, support and the volume of data collected from increasingly complex control systems on modern farm equipment, stand-alone or small dealerships may struggle in future to offer the timely service expected by customers, they said.
Savings achieved by improved economies of scale arising from the acquisition of Ag Implements will go towards a larger staff complement and greater training to deal with complex future systems, they pointed out.
"It is to have economy of scale so we can afford to bring in a support system for the skill shortages," Mr Coetzee said.
"We would not have invested money in acquiring the Ag Implements dealerships if we thought we could not maintain what we have and make it better.
"It is all about keeping John Deere customers, making sure we continue the business where it is and making sure our new customer base feel there is an advantage for them from this acquisition."
