CablePrice’s Sam Reece has been crowned World’s Best Hitachi Technician at the 2019 Hitachi Top Technician Competition which took place late last month in Japan.

Greymouth-based Reese took out the Hitachi Top Technician New Zealand title over 13 other competitors in Auckland earlier this year, which took him onto the Oceania round at Hitachi Construction Australia’s Revesby Branch in New South Wales. He beat three Australian rivals to qualify for the World Finals at the Hitachi Technical Training Centre in Kasumigaura, where he was up against the best from Japan, South Africa, France, Turkey, China, Russia and India.

Reese’s day started with a 75-minute practical test in which he had to find three faults in the Hitachi ZX200-5B, the first of these faults being that the excavator didn’t start. None of the competitors found all three faults, however Reese was the quickest off the mark to get his machine started again and went on to find the attachment fault rather quickly as well. It was a nail biting 75-mintues between Reese and Wakaba Uno of Japan, who was the first women ever to compete in the Hitachi Top Tech Finals. 

Reese was hit with a disadvantage when his Hitachi ConSite maintenance app wasn’t working. Luckily, with his 13 years of Hitachi knowledge, he didn’t panic and recreated the results from the app straight into excel. Another added pressure was the audience and cameras. ''There was a live audience and camera crews everywhere as Hitachi was recording event.” he said. “Dealing with the cameras and lights in your face while all the time I had to be thinking about the work in hand - it was intense."

The next portion of the competition was the reporting section in which the contestants had to create a presentation of the processes they took in repairing the machine and present it to the panel of judges. 

Later that evening at the award ceremony Reese was announced the winner of Hitachi Top Technician 2019 by Mr Ikeda, Vice President and Executive Officer, General Manager of Life Cycle Support Operations Division for Hitachi Construction Machinery.  

Reese said is very honoured to be awarded the title of the World’s Best Hitachi Technician and has been sharing his victory with his CablePrice support team as well as the Greymouth community all of which are very proud of him.