MANUFACTURING SECTOR
State’s truck plan unfeasible, says Isuzu chief
Fulfilling the government’s desire for a full-scale South African truck manufacturing industry is not currently feasible and could increase prices by up to 30%, Craig Uren, MD of Isuzu Trucks SA, said on Wednesday. Encouraged by the success of motor industry policies that have attracted billions of rand of foreign investment in the local manufacture of cars and bakkies, the Department of Trade and Industry has added trucks to its local production wish-list for the next stage of automotive policy, from 2021. Many of the trucks sold in SA are assembled in the country from imported kits. In the future, the department wants companies to source components from local suppliers, just as car companies do. Such a shift would create new jobs, it argues. Uren, however, said the local truck market made it difficult to justify such a strategy. In 2016, SA’s seven established car and bakkie companies built about 600,000 vehicles. The total truck and bus market, shared among about 20 brands, was f...
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