Indian vehicle manufacturers continue to battle for traction in the competitive South African automotive market.
Official new vehicle sales statistics for August released at the weekend showed that combined sales from Tata and Mahindra totalled just 1.1% of the total 51,436 new vehicles sold during the month.
Tata sold 389 vehicles and Mahindra 181 vehicles in August – well off their peak sales figures notched up in 2006. Market leaders Toyota and Volkswagen sold over 9350 and 9085 units respectively during the same month.
Tata and Mahindra are also still well off the sales figures achieved by ‘niche’ vehicle producers like Honda (617 vehicles sold in August), Suzuki (448) and Fiat (383).
At the halfway mark to end-June this year, the cumulative sales by Indian vehicle makers was just over 3,000 units. The latest sales figures suggest that – despite an improving new vehicle market in SA – sales from Tata and Mahindra will not top the 6,932 units achieved in 2010.
Tata, which achieved a monthly sales average of around 1600 vehicles in 2006 (thanks mainly to strong sales performances in the passenger and light commercial vehicle categories with the Tata Indica and Tata Telcoline), appears determined to address slow sales. In July, Tata invested $15m)in an assembly plant in SA at Rosslyn (north of Pretoria) in a bid to bolstering the operations and presence of the company in SA.
The plant assembles SKD (semi knocked down) kits for light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles ranging from 4 tonnes to 50 tonnes. The plant has an annualised production capacity of 3650 vehicles. The plant is initially assembling two models, the Tata LPT 813 and Tata LPT 1518 – which are two of Tata’s most popular models in SA.