Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar is investing $7 million in a new Regional Training Center (RTC) in Jebel Ali, Dubai, United Arab Emirates to offer hands-on machines and power systems technical and sales training to its dealers and customers in the African and Middle East Region (AME).

According to the company, the 5,100 square-foot facility will feature a lab for scheduled oil sampling analysis to “help meet critical customer required turnaround time of emergency samples and reduce downtime of Caterpillar products in the region.”

The new training facility is expected to be operational in the last quarter of this year, employing about 40 mostly high-level technical staff, primarily recruited from the region.

“The more than 7,000 technicians at AME Cat dealers have some of the most direct connections with Caterpillar customers as they service and maintain their equipment,” says Nigel Lewis, vice president of the Illinois-based company’s AME Distribution Division.

The training regimen, he says, “will help to enhance their skills and knowledge on both product and the latest product support technologies.”

CATERPILLAR’S RECENTLY OPENED DISTRIBUTION WAREHOUSE ON THE SAME SITE AS NEW RTC

The Dubai RTC will be on the same site as Caterpillar’s new state-of-the-art Middle East parts distribution warehouse center and regional sales and marketing office, which was dedicated in March.

Caterpillar has opened the warehouse in anticipation that its spare parts business in the AME region will expand by as much as 50 percent over the next three years.

“The 11-hectare site will house 96,000 spare parts, with customers seeing an appreciable improvement in the availability and speed in which spare parts orders are able to be filled, especially for less common parts,” the company adds.

The new AME distribution center is one of eight that the company maintains outside North America. Construction is underway on new warehouse facilities in Queensland, Australia, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

Last fall, Caterpillar unveiled a revamped global marketing and product support strategy to offset a major decline in international sales.