Nissan South Africa aims to more than double production at its assembly plant in Rosslyn to 100 000 units a year by 2015.

Mike Whitfield, Nissan SA’s managing director, said last week the investment required to achieve this was not substantial and the increased production would be achieved by moving to a two-shift operation.

Whitfield said it was at this stage too early to quantify the investment, which was more related to specific models and ongoing investment in technology for quality improvements.

However, there would be limited investment in its paint shop and in its supply chain and logistics.

Whitfield said Nissan SA needed to have fewer production platforms and higher volumes and it would move to a two-platform plant while growing annual capacity to 100 000 on a double shift.

This would also give the plant more flexibility to manage any bottlenecks, such as in its paint shop. Nissan SA is currently producing five models from four platforms.

Whitfield said the two platforms it would focus on in the future were its one-ton pickup and the NP200 half-ton bakkie and Renault Sandero, which were produced off the same platform.

He said Nissan SA did not at this stage anticipate producing any other models off the NP200/Renault Sandero platform, but said there were possibilities for expansion on this platform because it was “nowhere near capacity”.

He said the aim was Nissan SA’s Rosslyn plant to be ranked as one of the top 10 plants within the Renault-Nissan alliance and as part of the process to achieve this it had installed a new production control system in the plant in December last year.

This system was used in all of Nissan’s European operations and managed the entire car building process, including the parts management, supply chain into the production line and scheduling back to the end user.

Nissan SA produced about 48 000 vehicles last year and anticipates increasing production to between about 56 000 and 60 000 units this year.

Whitfield said this growth would be driven by a full year of exports into Europe and Africa while it would also start exporting to Russia and Turkey from the middle of this year.

He said there was increased demand from markets in North Africa and hopefully this would not be affected by the current public protests and unrest.

Nissan SA is targeting growth in sales of about 13 percent this year, largely through the launch later this year of the Micra into the B-segment of the passenger car market, and compact special utility vehicle, the Juke.

Nissan SA had not been active for a number of years in the key B-segment and its focus for future model launches would be at the lower end of the market to drive its growth while also consolidating its position in the commercial vehicle market.

He said it achieved growth in sales of commercial vehicles of about 15 percent last year despite being severely hampered by supply problems.

But Whitfield said the biggest portion of its growth this year would come from passenger vehicle sales, which were expected to grow by more than the overall market. - Roy Cokayne