The vision of one man, a child during the Great Depression, who had a fascination with machinery and tools from an early age, is today one of South Africa’s greatest OEM legends.

Bell Equipment celebrates its 60^th anniversary this year. This milestone provides an appropriate time for introspection. Irvine Bell gave rise to one of the country’s manufacturing icons that designs and produces world class equipment for the global market.

A fitter and turner by trade, Bell began a small general engineering and equipment repair shop on a farm in Empangeni in 1954 to serve the farming community of Zululand.

With his innovation and vision, the company provided sugar cane farmers of that time with refreshing solutions to improve efficiencies on their farms. A milestone in the company’s history came in 1964 when Irvine developed a Tri-Wheeled cane loading machine, which revolutionised the sugar farming industry and is still widely in use today.

Bell and its extended family of employees value their roots and the founding principles instilled by Irvine and are encouraged by what the company has achieved against international competitors in a highly competitive industry.

Today Bell is a leading global manufacturer, distributer and exporter of a wide range of material handling machines, which are marketed and distributed, both locally and internationally, through a wide network of branches and independent dealers. The company supplies machinery to the sugar, forestry, mining and construction industries worldwide and has about 3 200 employees across the globe.

As one of the global leaders in the articulated dump truck market, Bell Equipment’s engineering expertise and product quality are comparable with other global players in the industry.