Following his recent appointment as MD of Babcock’s Equipment business, Tim Ward has placed market share growth for the BULL brand and the adoption of newly-launched Volvo products as one of the immediate objectives. Leveraging strong foundations already in place, Ward also seeks to foster a company-wide, customer-oriented culture.
Having served as financial director of the business since 2003, Ward assumed the MD role in October 2025, taking over from David Vaughan, who has taken on a new position as Executive Chairman of the Equipment business until his planned retirement in October 2026.
In the MD role, Ward takes responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Equipment business and is responsible for creating and implementing strategies to achieve growth and meet company objectives. In addition, he is also responsible for the strategic management of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnerships with Babcock’s principals such as Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE), Sennebogen and BULL.
Ward highlights that one of his immediate objectives is to grow market share for the BULL brand. Since taking over the distributorship of BULL backhoe loaders and skid steers in July 2023, Babcock has put the brand on a growth trajectory, but Ward believes that there is potential to gain even more market share.
In BULL, he says, Babcock has a great product to challenge for more market share. Having first entered the market in November 2011, BULL is said to be the youngest and fastest growing backhoe loader manufacturer in the global market. Within a span of a decade, the brand is now among the top three backhoe loader manufacturers in India, demonstrating its competitive edge in the backhoe and skid steer market.
Ward’s tenure also coincides with the arrival of an array of new Volvo products. In fact, Volvo CE has renewed over 35% of its total product range in the past year, marking the company’s largest product portfolio renewal in decades. While some of the new products such as the New Generation Volvo articulated haulers and the new F-Series excavators have already been rolled out in southern Africa, Ward says more are still to come in a staged approach.
“We have already introduced the first three models of the New Generation range of articulated dump trucks (ADTs), namely the A40, A45 and A50. Next year, we will be rolling out the A30 and the A60. One of the key objectives is to ensure the immediate success of these new products in the market,” says Ward.
Commenting on the uptake of the ADTs, Ward says customers in southern Africa have shown significant interest in the range. One of the central pillars of the early interest has been the technological advancements that speak directly to better productivity and efficiency.
Apart from products, Ward says his role also entails active involvement in fostering a company-wide customer-oriented culture, highlighting that customer interactions are something that he is already familiar with from his previous role as financial director. “The biggest change, however, is the people aspect – overseeing the human resources function, approving key hiring decisions, overseeing performance management frameworks and ensuring the retention of personnel,” he says.
As he steps into his new role, Ward is focused on building on Babcock’s strong foundation and purpose-led approach. “Our business has always been defined by trusted partnerships, technical capability and customer uptime. That won’t change,” he says. “What will continue to evolve is how we deliver lifetime value – through new products, digital solutions and skilled people who go the distance for our customers. I am confident that, together with our OEM partners and our teams across southern Africa, we will continue to engineer progress that lasts –for our customers, our people and the industries we serve.”
