Caterpillar has shifted its strategy on its electric-power generator business away from military contracts in Middle Eastern markets such as Iraq and Afghanistan as it looks to focus on infrastructure works, a senior executive at the firm has said.
The American equipment manufacturer says it has had to ‘reinvent’ itself in these troubled parts of the region where it has relied heavily on US military contracts, said Neil McDougall, global sales director at Caterpillar.
“We’re going through a bit of a change with markets like Iraq or Afghanistan because they have historically been very, very strong for us, and most of that has been built off the back of military business, whether that’s direct military interaction or whether that’s support for the infrastructure that is being put in place for the US military,” McDougall told Construction Machinery ME.
“We are a US company so we have a very strong bond with the military directly but also with the US suppliers [and] contractors. We’ve had a very, very strong business in those areas for the past several years.”
In the past Caterpillar would supply gen-sets for camp power for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, McDougall added.
But different times call for a shift in approach, he pointed out.
“As things have overall become more stable in some of those regions, we’ve had to slightly reinvent ourselves,” McDougall said. “Now we’re down to core business again and actually identifying with customers as infrastructure starts to get rebuilt, the kind of customers we would normally be doing business with but in past years it wasn’t based around that. It was based around a very different structure.”
The executive was speaking at a Caterpillar event held at the recent Middle East Electricity event.
McDougall added that the change has been positive, business-wise. “So it’s been good for us and good for the dealers as well.”