Rata Equipment increases its Australian footprint

Date: 30.11.2022

After two years of operations in Australia, the team at NZ-based attachments manufacturer Rata Equipment has made a move to take on more control of its Australian operations

The team at Rata Equipment hopes their brand-new Ballarat base will help the company better serve Australia’s rural communities

The company has now opened its own Australian depot in Ballarat to act as a hub for the tractor and telehandler attachments it produces before sending them to its network of dealers nationwide.

The family-owned company’s Australian representative Sam Searle says the decision will help the company be better established in the Australian agricultural community.

"We now have end-to-end control over the Australian operations, so when the container doors shut in New Zealand, the doors are opened by us on the other end as well," he says.

"This is just to give us more control over importing, to give us the base to launch further products and offer more value to our customers."

Products will be shipped from Rata’s New Zealand factories to the Ballarat base, where they will be warehoused before being distributed to the company’s dealers across the country.

Having its own Australian depot will also mean that the company can assign warehouse space to storage of parts – something that in the past had been fairly simple due to the basic nature of some of Rata’s products.

"As we get into more technical products, the customers need to know that they’ve got access to parts locally and they will not have to be specially imported," Sam says.

"We can stock our parts in greater quantities and in a broader range to give our customers more peace of mind," he says.

"We are a company in New Zealand that’s based in the regions, and we’re passionate about the regions, so being able to base ourselves in Ballarat allows us to stay close to our agricultural customers, which is something we want to do wherever we can."

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