MASSLIFT AFRICA: Commitment to Service and People Reaps Rewards

Unsung heroes, certainly, but forklifts are among the most powerful weapons in the armouries of numerous Southern African sectors. Whether moving heavy loads through a warehouse or a construction site, forklifts can safely lift objects humans cannot, making them indispensable to just about any large job. They also have multiple applications in Southern Africa’s highly diversified agricultural sector, proving themselves integral in every corner of the farm, while the surging automotive industry would also flounder without them.

The forklift’s versatility gives it a vital role in ensuring a smooth and effective logistics infrastructure, and now its more traditional, longstanding applications are furthered by the burgeoning e-commerce market of Southern Africa and the massive operational benefits of the trucks to effectively handle material.

Allowing the more effective deployment of manpower, reducing the time necessary to move goods and highly manoeuvrable, forklifts are taking the strain out of complex, heavy operations and propelling businesses to ever-greater heights.

SERVICE ABOVE ALL

In an increasingly competitive market, Mitsubishi Forklifts are widely recognised as one of the top brands and most reliable products available. Masslift Africa is the envy of many as the sole distributor of Mitsubishi Forklifts in Southern Africa, a partnership dating back some five decades, CEO Marco Caverni tells Enterprise Africa.

“The relationship with Mitsubishi began back in 1972, when the company was known as APE Africa,” he begins. “In 1982 it become the exclusive dealer in Southern Africa, and then Masslift Africa was born in 1992. Then, just before the recession hit in the mid-late 2000s, there was pressure to increase sales in the area while focusing on transformation within the company,” he details of an important epoch in the company’s timeline.

“New Seasons Investment Holdings, a venture capital business and a black-owned company bought into Masslift to assist with transformation but also the company’s direction. The new shareholders went headhunting for industry specialists to take over from the exiting owner.

“Our now retired-CEO Geoff Tucker was running Barloworld Handling in the UK at the time, while I was working for Barloworld Handling in South Africa. The two of us joined Masslift Africa at the beginning of 2010 with a simple vision: to be the best service provider in the market.”

Today, Masslift Africa is renowned for its exceptional customer service, and Caverni positions this as one key element of its unrivalled success. “We honestly believe as an organisation, and especially in South Africa, that service levels are greatly under-appreciated,” he states. “There is no such thing as a bad forklift anymore, so it is all about offering exceptional service levels and prioritising relationships to differentiate yourself.

“To do that, it is imperative to build infrastructure, drive our company culture daily and implement the right policies and procedures,” he explains, “and then, most importantly, invest in people. Training and upskilling them, while inspiring them to buy into the culture of the business, is a major focus area for us. It is impossible to offer the best service without the right people in the right positions driving the business forward.”

Masslift Africa has made investing in youth upskilling a particular focus of its business strategy. “The youth of today want to see change and they want to be a part of something special. We are also flexible and always ready to implement change rather than stay stuck in the ‘old ways’ which is something the younger employees get excited about. We recognise the fact that their tech savviness is an asset, and we encourage them to drive change and innovation. We have actually implemented a lot of innovative ideas that have been brought forward by young employees which have proven to be very effective,” Masslift’s COO Shaun Collins elaborates.

“The development of South Africa’s youth is critical to ensuring economic growth and a prosperous future for the next generation,” Caverni asserts. “This makes us the custodians of the future careers that our employees will have, and we take it very seriously. Growth is a central pillar of the Masslift organisational culture.”

To drive and support the company’s skills development plan, Masslift opened the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ training centre in 2018, to empower, upskill, and qualify employees at all skills and educational levels from novice apprentices through to advanced qualified technicians. Collins goes on to say that retaining qualified technical specialists is a challenge that Masslift, like other companies, faces along with the risk of losing employees to local and even international competitors. “In support of employee retention, we believe that our culture has roots and once this is imbedded in you, you generally find it very hard to leave, no matter what the circumstances. In addition to this, we provide our employees with valued benefits that give security and peace of mind in both the short and long term. Apprentices who have qualified are automatically promoted to either a field or workshop service technician in the month following their graduation.”

Masslift Africa believes in not only investing in the youth through employment opportunities, skills development, and mentorship but also in assisting organisations that are dedicated to uplifting children and young people. “As a company operating in South Africa, it is vital for us to play our part to ensure the stability of the economy but also the stability of the people living in our country. We believe in helping where we can, and our CSI initiatives are intentional and driven towards that goal. It’s important for us to plough back into the communities around us,” says Masslift CFO Thembi Mazibuko.

“We are on a journey at present, to say the least, but amid this chaotic environment the best thing is that we are doing it all together, bumping our heads and making mistakes but overall gaining traction and good market share. Our staff believe that we are doing something truly special. For me, that it is the big positive of the company at present,” Caverni adds. 

A YEAR TO CELEBRATE

Not only has Masslift Africa maintained operational continuity and proved its resilience throughout the pandemic, but it has also defied the context of shifting lockdown levels, fluctuating sector challenges and varying client requirements since March 2020 to pull off a quite remarkable performance. “We have managed to get through COVID-19 while producing our best ever results as a company,” Caverni declares, and Mazibuko underlines the enormity of this achievement.

“While operating under shipment and freight issues, riots and more, our net profit after tax for the financial year ending March 2021 increased by 120%, literally doubling and then some,” she explains. “The worst month in the history of the company was April last year, and in 11 months we have turned around a significant operating loss to be in the strongest position that the company has ever occupied.”

“We can feel the difficulties of the economy in customers facing liquidations and closing down, and yet for the first time ever in 2020 we sold over 1000 forklifts,” Caverni adds. “The sound strength of the business model and infrastructure should take some credit, but it is again testament to the attitudes of the staff. Our employees are the heroes of the Masslift success story during this pandemic. This, along with strong relationships with our OEM, Mitsubishi Logisnext, and local suppliers, has kept Masslift’s operations moving forward.”

It is, additionally, a vindication of the agile approach that Masslift Africa has adopted in the face of every new challenge and another key difference-maker. “Agility has been a defining factor for the businesses that were able to weather 2020,” Caverni recognises, “and was undoubtedly key to our survival. We realised that our staff would need to be equipped and supported within their individual roles every step of the way,” he reasons. “We knew that asking our staff to outperform in highly stressful conditions was a huge request and so agility had to start at the top.

“We used the virtual standstill of the initial months to lay the foundation for resilience,” Caverni details. “The view was that we were going to tackle the rest of the year with a better foundation and a stronger team, and I feel we did exactly that. The financial results from May 2020 onwards were outstanding and now the most difficult question we face is: how are you going to better it next year?”

For this young, dynamic and forward-thinking company, the response could well be in the adoption of new technologies. “Digitisation has moved at a rapid pace due to the pandemic and thus it’s important to continually assess how we can enhance the customer experience through technology. It’s business unusual, we don’t have the comfort of the experiences from the past to draw from and thus it becomes critical to have a clearly articulated strategy on how to maintain the profitability of the business. We also need to leverage our Level 2 B-BBEE rating as much as we can because it’s a testament to Masslift’s commitment to transformation in the country and its development,” Mazibuko says.

Now with five branches and 20 sub-dealers across Southern Africa, the Masslift Africa commitment to service is setting it up to dominate for the foreseeable future. “We measure every single interaction that takes place with us,” Caverni says, “because we are always learning. Our average customer service rating for the year is at 86%, compared to the estimated industry standard of 60-70%, and we still have a lot of room for improvement.”

“We are cognisant of the fact that our service levels are greatly impacted by parts availability and our service turnaround times. It’s thus a bit of an art to get the balance right to ensure that we focus on customer centricity while remaining profitable. When our customers express their dissatisfaction with our service levels, we address the issue promptly and transparently, and then ensure we learn from the mistake made as not to repeat it,” Collins adds.

Caverni’s conclusion is typically humble as he turns his attention to the company’s continued success. “We know that the product is amazing, and if we can keep our culture then the attitude of our staff will mean the forklifts pretty much sell themselves. We are also constantly exploring partnerships and opportunities which can complement our customer offering. We are not perfect, and we make mistakes, but we are striving to become so impressive that people have no desire to do business with anyone else, because the experience with us is unbeatable.

“It seems to be working.”