George Landsberg is founder
and managing director of
Goscor High-Reach.
Manlift to run it.
“In 2009, we sold the rental company to our
opposition but we kept the distribution. In
2011, we were approached by Goscor which
is part of Imperial holdings, a big logistics
company in South Africa.They wanted us to
buy in to the company with the idea in the
long term to set up a new rental company.”
New partners
Goscor bought the controlling share, 51%,
of Highreach Manlift, which then became
Goscor High-Reach. A little later Mr
Landsberg started the rental operation Goscor
Access Rental, which is a separate
company, with different
management to keep the
rental and sales operations
separate. Mr Landsberg is
a shareholder and director
of the rental operation but
keeps it at arm’s length.
“It’s more of an
investment,” he
says.
G
eorge Landsberg’s latest venture is
access equipment distribution company
Goscor Hi-Reach, which he founded a
couple of years ago and is managing director.
But his interest in the industry began at the
end of the last century.
“We originally started with a rental
company going back to the late 1990s called
Johnson Access, which became the biggest
rental company in Southern Africa.Then
during the early 2000s, when Genie was taken
over by Terex, it offered us the distribution
rights for the area. Initially we didn’t take it.”
In 2005 Mr Landsberg agreed to the Genie
distributorship and set up a new company
with separate management called Highreach
“The main reason we took the Genie
distributorship was because we thought the
other companies representing Genie in the
country were not doing a particularly good job
and I needed Genie as a partner and supplier
in that market.”
The company also represents Custom
Equipment’s Hy-Brid Lifts, Teupen and PB
Lift Technik.
Mr Landsberg has also taken an interest
in ATN vertical masts and has invested in
a number of units which will be used in the
rental company to test the market.
“I am talking to ATN to see what the future
might bring. We are testing the market with
this type of product; it’s not something that
is very big. But we like to explore these new
markets. In South Africa we are not even
close to saturation, so we can play around
with new ideas and products and see where
it takes us.”
“In Europe you have a resistance towards
people using ladders; in South
Africa that has not been the case,
INTERVIEW
George Landsberg is a
pioneer of the powered
access industry in South
Africa, one of the fastest
growing markets in
the world. He spoke to
Euan Youdale
about the
opportunities there.
Southern sales
MARCH-APRIL 2014
access
INTERNATIONAL
11
A boom reaches into the South
African skies in Johannesburg.
Cable work
at a retail
outlet
