Within just a year of taking on the exclusive distribution of LiuGong’s full range of equipment in southern Africa ELB Equipment has claimed top honours at the LiuGong Annual Dealer Conference in Liuzhou, China taking the prestigious President’s Award along the way.

Upon signing the agreement with LiuGong last year, ELB Equipment CEO, Desmond van Heerden, had emphasised that the success of the partnership would demand rapid establishment of technical capabilities to support the new equipment as well as requiring a considerable effort from the company’s staff to ramp up stock across its 11-branch national footprint. This led to the team spending the remainder of 2024 and the early parts of 2025 building local inventories of capital equipment like wheel loaders, excavators, graders, backhoe loaders, skid steers and mining trucks among others, while simultaneously rolling out support capacity for the manufacturer’s existing customer base.

A year later the hard work and investment has been justified as the ELB Equipment Team with global recognition at the Dealer Conference which was attended by more than 1 300 delegates and over 500 dealers worldwide. The South African company walked away with four awards including the Best New Dealer, Outstanding Total Sales, Excellence in Compact Equipment Sales and the headline President’s Awards.

“This recognition confirms that our strategic decision is working. Our expanded product portfolio now gives long-standing customers access to a full spectrum of world-class equipment backed by our extensive established aftersales abilities. At the same time LiuGong owners in South Africa now benefit from a support structure built on decades of industry experience and sub-dealer coverage across key industrial centres throughout southern Africa.

LiuGong’s southern Africa sales manager Pu Yonghua says the market remains a priority for the manufacturer and that ELB Equipment’s strong customer-first approach is reinforcing the brand’s position in the region.

Reflecting on the whirlwind year gone by Van Heerden says the partnership has moved quickly from establishing supply lines and building stock to outperforming global competitors in the LiuGong network. With 2026 set to bring further consolidation and expansion the collaboration is the beginning of a longer-term growth trajectory that is ready to challenge the region’s heavy-equipment sector for an increasingly large slice of the market share.