AROUND THE
INDUSTRY
January - February 2014
MODERN QUARRYING
7
Terex sells truck business
Terex is selling its truck business to
Volvo Construction Equipment for some
US$160‑million. The truck business manufac-
tures and sells off-highway rigid and articu-
lated haul trucks. Included in the transaction
is the manufacturing facility in Motherwell,
Scotland. The sale, which is subject to gov-
ernment regulatory approvals and other
customary closing conditions, is targeted to
close in the first half of 2014.
“The truck business has been an impor-
tant part of our company for over three
decades and continues to produce world-
class products with dedicated and talented
employees,” says Ron DeFeo, Terex chair-
man and CEO. “However, trucks no longer fit
within our changing portfolio of lifting and
material handling businesses. I am pleased
that the truck business will benefit by join-
ing a company sharing similar competencies
and offering complementary products and
services. We are pleased to have entered into
this agreement with Volvo, which represents
a strong strategic buyer for the business who
values our distribution network and team
members,” he adds.
example, the research will look not just at
environmental changes to the landscape,
but also at human settlement patterns,
and what communities in that area report
and remember about the changes over
time. To do this, the CSMI collaborates
with research groups such as the Society,
Work and Development Institute – also
at Wits University – to tap into the meth-
odologies they use in working with com-
munities and their body of knowledge
on how communities in South Africa are
shaped.
“We do this because, while there are
natural limits to what you can extract
from nature, that’s not the only important
aspect of sustainability,” Coulson con-
firms. “We also need to talk about a sus-
tainable society, sustainable communities
and sustainable business models.”
Stakeholder engagement is another
key research focus. “One form of engage-
ment we’ll be looking at is in the area of
artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM),
which is gathering more attention now
in southern Africa. The sector is a source
of livelihood in many communities, but
is also precarious and sometimes char-
acterised by conflict. This may occur
where a licence is awarded to a company
by national government on a site where
artisanal miners are already operating.
Artisanal miners are often considered as a
significant social risk for large-scale min-
ing companies,” she says.
The ASM research will not be lim-
ited to South Africa but will extend to
other Southern African Development
Community (SADC) countries. CSMI’s
researchers have already done substantial
work on ASM in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, in the context of understanding
stakeholder engagement and corporate
social responsibility.
“We are excited about the ASM
research focus as it creates the oppor-
tunity to network and learn across the
SADC region,” says Coulson. “There have
been initiatives in SADC to harmonise the
approach to mining within the region –
including a better understanding of the
challenges of ASM – and we hope to feed
our research into this process.”
