Exports of vehicles increase in August

Naamsa's Nico Vermeulen expects that domestic vehicles sales will fall but improvements in Europe should see exports rising quite sharply. Image: Naamsa

Domestic new vehicle sales‚ however‚ continued to struggle. But for a second successive month of car-rental orders‚ the new-car market would have fallen much more than the 2.7% it did‚ compared with August last year.

Rental sales accounted for 13% of the monthly market‚ rather than the usual 6% to 7%. Having launched the new C-Class‚ MBSA is still working its way to full production at its East London assembly plant. The company exported nothing in the first five months of the year‚ but has shipped 1‚477‚ 2‚306 and 3‚422 vehicles respectively since June.

Volkswagen South Africa has also seen overseas orders rise‚ following the launch of its facelifted Polo‚ and last month exported a year's best of 6‚390 vehicles.

BMW South Africa‚ however‚ outdid everyone with 6‚439 3-Series exports.

It should be borne in mind that some companies are working overtime to recover lost production during the July steel and engineering industries strike that caused most motor producers to either suspend or reduce production.

Latest monthly figures

Latest monthly figures from the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) show South African exported 25‚027 new vehicles last month‚ compared with 21‚116 in August last year.

Car manufacturing levels are sharply up with several manufacturers working overtime to catch up on export orders. Image: SA Car Fan

Cars made the biggest gain‚ rising 72% from 9‚275 to 16‚715.

The smaller number was unnaturally low as all manufacturers lost production in the second half of August last year‚ at the start of strikes that shut down the industry for seven weeks. Despite the improved figures‚ exports have a lot of catching up to do. Units for the first eight months were down 16.3%‚ from 195‚923 to 164‚034.

However‚ Naamsa director Nico Vermeulen said that recovery in some key markets‚ such as Europe‚ should see the gap narrowing for the remainder of the year. He said domestic sales of new vehicles would probably fall 4%-5% this year.

Naamsa's figures showed that car sales fell 2.7% compared with the previous August‚ from 39‚000 to 37‚953. Total industry sales‚ including commercial vehicles‚ fell 1.4% from 56‚489 to 55‚722.

For the first eight months of this year‚ cars were down 4% from 255‚591 to 245‚417‚ and all vehicles 4.3% from 440‚924 to 421‚847.

Toyota South Africa's President Johan van Zyl said last week that he expected the market to continue bottoming out slowly for another two years before beginning a steady recovery from 2017.

Nicholas Nkosi‚ Head of Vehicle and Asset Finance at Standard Bank‚ said he expected the recovery to start in 2016. He discounted fears that the collapse of African Bank could affect the lending sentiment of banks in the vehicle finance sector. "The credit issues that contributed to the collapse have already been factored in by those banks‚" he said.

Source: BDPro via I-Net Bridge