Johannesburg - Datsun’s vision to produce vehicles at Nissan South Africa’s Rosslyn plant in Pretoria is still on.
Vincent Cobee, the global head of Datsun, said yesterday that there was a lot of logic in saying South Africa was the ideal location to produce Datsun products for the African market because of the size and capability of the Rosslyn plant and the country’s skills, suppliers and existing infrastructure.
But Cobee indicated that the low sales volumes of new cars in Africa and competitiveness issues were holding back a decision on the Rosslyn plant. “If we continue to improve its competitiveness and the overall economic environment is predictable enough, it is a good base for the African continent.”
Cobee said increasingly more people in emerging markets wanted individual mobility and a number of new markets were opening up to Datsun.
Cobee said 50 million new cars were sold globally in 2000, with 80 percent of them sold in North America, Western Europe, East Asia, Japan and Korea but Latin America, Africa, India and China accounted for only about 10 percent of these sales.
He said more than 50 percent of the cars sold today worldwide were in these new markets. “These fast-growing markets that sold 10 million cars in 2000 are going to increase sales to 60 million cars by 2020.
“I don’t see the African market as 60 countries but 30 mega cities. I haven’t lost faith in Africa. This is a continent with 150 million to 200 million customers. They exist and are here to stay,” he said.
Cobee added that Datsun had identified 40 to 50 markets that were relevant to Datsun, with at least 20 of them in Africa, 10 in Latin America and five or six in south Asia.
BUSINESS REPORT