Production

The first Scania assembly plant in South Africa was established in 1995 in Elandsfontein, east of Johannesburg. In 2003, following increased demand for the company’s trucks and buses in South and Southern Africa, a new, purpose- built plant was opened in Aeroton as part of Scania’s Johannesburg-based Head Office and Central Spare Parts Warehouse Complex.  A comprehensive range of Scania trucks as well as the F94 bus chassis are assembled from ‘knocked-down’ kits on two assembly lines at this facility.

The plant employs 68 full-time personnel, 60 of whom are dedicated assembly technicians capable of producing four trucks and three bus chassis per eight-hour shift. The remaining staff members are concerned with logistics and quality assurance tasks. If necessary, both assembly lines can be used for truck production, in which case around six units can be delivered per shift. At a steady production rate, an average of 80 trucks and 45 bus chassis drive off the assembly lines each month.

Today, Scania’s South African plant is positioned the largest assembly operation from knocked down kits outside of Brazil. (Taiwan in second place). And so efficiently is the assembly plant run in South Africa, that it is seen as a model for future such operations world-wide.

In August 2005, Scania established a record by producing 95 trucks using only a single daily shift on one assembly line. In servicing the Scania’s Southern African Region - comprising South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the southern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo - the plant addresses the largest geographic area of any similar Scania facility, by a considerable margin.

A key focus of the plant is training. Both academic as well as practical training programmes are presented to young candidates, many of whom arrive at the Scania Training Centre as school leavers. They are trained to international standards in accordance with the guidelines of the Scania Productivity System (SPS) which places added emphasis on operational safety. Many successful students find employment within the Scania organisation, while others are eagerly accepted into the local transport, manufacturing and supporting industries where they are seen as a valuable resource.