Ahern Chile grand opening

Snorkel and Xtreme Manufacturing has officially opened Ahern Chile, the new sales and service provider for the companies in Latin America.

Based in Santiago, Ahern Chile is the latest location in the Ahern International distribution group, that also includes Ahern Australia, Ahern Japan, Ahern Deutschland and Ahern Canada. They are focused on distribution of Snorkel and Xtreme Manufacturing products, as well as spare parts and technical service. The Ahern International businesses do not offer equipment rental.

Led by Brody McFarland, VP of sales for Latin America for Xtreme Manufacturing and Snorkel, Ahern Chile made its first entry into the Latin American market at ConExpo Latin America in October 2015, showing a range of Snorkel AWPs and Xtreme telehandlers.

Mr McFarland then appointed Nicolas Pacifico as regional general operations manager in December 2015. Mr Pacifico has a strong background in aerial work platform sales in the region, having previously led the sales operations in Chile for Haulotte. This was followed by the appointment of Andre Mendonca as regional sales manager for Argentina, and Carlos Vegar as Parts Manager.

In March 2016, Ahern Chile made its first product sale to local customer Metalmar, and signed a lease on a facility located in a prominent position in Santiago city on Chile Route 5, which runs from the Peru border and is Chile’s longest highway. The facility includes over 250 square metres (2,690 square ft) of modern office space, as well as 2,000 square metres (21,527 square ft) of workshop and warehouse space, including separate parts storage.

Following a short period of fit-out work, Ahern Chile opened the facility in June 2016, followed by the appointment of Matias Fuentas as office manager in October 2016, plus the investment in sales and service vehicles. The Ahern Chile warehouse is stocked with new Snorkel lifts and Xtreme telehandlers, ready for fast delivery to customers in Chile, and across Latin America.

Mr McFarland said, “Chile is the perfect location to establish our distribution for Latin America. This is a stable market, with an open trade environment that makes it easy to do business. Our investment in this market has been very well received by customers so far, and we have many possibilities for expanding our business here into sectors beyond rental, including industrial and mining.”

“Snorkel is already reasonably well-established in Latin America, thanks to the work of our independent distributors, however Xtreme Manufacturing is a new brand in the market. We are fortunate that some of the regions, such as Argentina, already understand the value of high capacity telehandlers within oil applications, so we already seeing a lot of interest in the larger Xtreme models. Lower capacity telehandlers commonly used within construction and utilities are still a fairly new concept across Latin America, but we are already working with some of our existing customers to demonstrate the safety and productivity benefits of telehandlers over truck cranes.”

Matthew Elvin, CEO for Snorkel and Xtreme Manufacturing said, “The opening of Ahern Chile follows our business philosophy of ‘think global, act local’. This investment ensures that we are set up to not only sell the equipment, but also effectively support our Latin American customers on a local level.”

The grand opening event on 13 December, marked the official launch of Ahern Chile. Over 100 rental and end user customers from across Latin America travelled to Santiago for the event, which included machine demonstrations, an official ribbon cutting ceremony and an evening of festivities.