The Johannesburg Truck & Bus Show, co-sponsored by the Johannesburg International Motor Show (JIMS) at Nasrec, opened today with very bold and positive statements made by some of the ‘heavyweights’ in the Transport Industry.
The first two days of the show were reserved to give media adequate access to the CEO’s, COO’s and in some cases, international executives of parent companies.
Kicking off the show MAN chairman, Geoff du Plessis, said that the local Transport Industry is enjoying the many advantages presented by the diversity of vehicles and equipment on offer to operators: “the SA market is well represented by OEMS”. While he acknowledged the many challenges facing the industry locally, he went on to say that MAN’s strategy remains focused on using the South African infrastructure as the burgeoning platform to launch operations into Africa, supplying products and services, and reaping the growth potential so evident on this continent. The single most important goal, according to Du Plessis, is consistent and continued investment into infrastructure and development by governments and industry alike in South Africa.
Scania’s managing director Steve Wager literally “threw down the gauntlet“, as he illustrated Scania’s wide product offering covering nearly every sector of the commercial vehicle truck and bus market segments, finance and fleet management and specialised service and maintenance solutions for specific sectors. He expressed an optimistic outlook for the SA market. Predicting that SA’s GDP could grow by as much as 5% next year he went on boldly giving Scania’s market offensive with new and improved products in represented sectors and introduced an innovative rental solution called Scania Rental, now available to local operators to overcome ‘peak period’ challenges.
Hino, which has been the top-selling truck and bus manufacturers in the Japanese domestic market for the past 40 years, is increasing its focus on the African market according to the executive vice-president responsible for Hino’s overseas operation, Koichi Ojima. Addressing the media the at the Johannesburg Truck & Bus Show he said: “Hino sold a record 154 000 units globally in 2012, of which 42 000 were sold in Japan and the remainder in overseas markets. Our largest sales volume comes from South-East Asian markets, but we realize that countries on the African continent are growing in importance for vehicle manufacturers due to the booming economies and rapid GDP growth rate.”
“One of the recent developments by Hino on this continent was the start of local production of our trucks at a plant in Mombasa, Kenya, earlier this year. We are well established in South Africa, having arrived here 41 years ago and are very pleased with the performance of the brand in this important market and Hino is set to continue its investment in South Africa.”
Vice president of Hino SA, Casper Kruger went on to announce that the truck plant at the Toyota SA Motors manufacturing complex in Prospecton, near Durban, is to be relocated to a nearby site during the plant shutdown at the end of the year.
The current facility will then be used solely for the assembly of the Toyota Ses’fikile minibus taxi. The relocation of the assembly of Hino and Dyna trucks to a dedicated facility will cost almost R50-million, which adds substance to the promise to honour growth in the local industry.
Bob Lowden , managing director of Iveco gave a bullish overview of Iveco’s 2014 market offensive, projecting substantial growth for the brand in every segment in which Iveco was represented. Exciting additional applications to the Iveco’s Daily 4×4 range are indicative of Iveco’s focus on providing great products in emerging market sectors. Iveco, like most all OEM’s reaffirmed their commitment to the SA operator. He put it quite simply: “Iveco’s goal is to be the best service provider in South Africa”.
