2006 John Deere Forestry News and Press Releases

Intrac Group, the John Deere dealer in the Baltic countries, has received John Deere's Dealer Excellence Award 2005. The award was presented to Intrac at the John Deere conference for the European dealers in Moline, Illinois, USA.

Intrac Group and its predecessor Thomesto AB has been the John Deere dealer in the Baltic countries for over 10 years. The Group's head office is in Sweden and it has subsidiaries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. During the last five years, Intrac has invested more than EUR 5 million in developing the forest machine maintenance network and spare parts services.

The subsidiaries, Intrac Eesti AS, SIA Intrac Latvija and UAB Intrac Lietuva, have invested particularly in the development of maintenance and spare parts services in the Baltic countries. The Group's retail and service network includes 11 spare parts and maintenance sites and 25 service vehicles. Additionally, the Group has eight forest machine repair workshops. Intrac stocks spare parts and accessories value is more than 2 MEUR in order to keep short delivery times to their customers.

John Deere has become clearly the market leader in forest machines in the Baltic countries. "Intrac has demonstrated a strong commitment to investing in the forest machine sector and the development of the entire service network in the Baltic region," says Timo Ylänen, Marketing Manager, John Deere Forestry Oy. "We sell more than just machines, we also sell trust and support," says Fredrik Brandhorst, Marketing Manager, Intrac Group. 

Brandhorst points out that "The needs of forest machine customers vary widely. Many machine contractors in the Baltic countries still service their own machines. More and more contractors, however, have realized that this isn't always the most cost-effective way to operate in the long run; it is more efficient to buy the maintenance services from a company specializing in them."

"Maintenance agreements are becoming increasingly popular with machine contractors. We will continue to invest in service capacity to ensure that we can offer our customers the best possible maintenance network also in the future," concludes Brandhorst.

For more information:

Timo Salomaa
Communications Manager
John Deere Forestry Oy
Tel. +358 40821 4573

Fredrik Brandhorst
Marketing Director, Partner
Intrac Group AB
Tel +46 705 42 8976

INTRAC Group in brief:
 
INTRAC is a dealer of wheeled forest machines. Its market area is the Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. INTRAC is owned by Swedfund, the Baltic Investment Fund and the management of Intrac. INTRAC's head office is located in Stockholm, Sweden.

John Deere (Deere & Company - NYSE:DE) is the world's leading manufacturer of agricultural and forestry equipment; a major manufacturer of construction equipment; and a leading supplier of equipment used in lawn, grounds and turf care. The company was founded in 1837. John Deere construction and forestry equipment is distributed through a network of more than 600 independent dealers worldwide.