Roy Cokayne
BMW SOUTH Africa has employed an additional 750 workers at its plant in Rosslyn, north-west of Pretoria, as it prepares for the introduction of a third shift at the plant.
BMW SA spokesman Guy Kilfoil said this week that the introduction of a third shift had already created about 600 new jobs for production workers and a further 150 jobs for salaried staff, largely comprising team leaders and engineers.
About 1 200 production workers had been undergoing training since July this year, Kilfoil said.
“We selected as many as we could for our [third shift] programme and sent the others back into the workplace with real skills that they can use in the automotive industry.”
Kilfoil said the plant’s body shop and paint shop would start operating on three shifts on October 15 but this would not result in any additional production because the extra shift would initially be used for training.
The third shift for the assembly operations in the plant would commence from November 1, he said, adding that the plant would then run for 24 hours a day six days a week with the remaining day in the week used for routine plant maintenance work.
The major increase in production capacity would only occur from next year, when production would rise to 360 cars a day from a maximum of about 250 cars a day now.
The bulk of the plant’s production would still be exported to the US with exports also destined for all its traditional export markets, including Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australasia and Taiwan, while it continued its export of painted bodies to India.
Vehicle exports to China and Canada would be added to this mix, Kilfoil said.
The exports to China follow BMW SA’s announcement in August that it had become the first car manufacturer in South Africa to receive a permit from the Chinese authorities, known as the China Quality Certification, since the implementation of the Motor Industry Development Programme.
The plan is for BMW SA to export about 3 900 cars to China this year but for the Chinese market to ultimately make up about 10 percent of its total export volume.
BMW SA was earmarked to spend R480 million this year, with 60 percent of this expenditure directly linked to the automotive production plan.
This investment forms part of the company’s R2.2 billion investment programme announced in 2009, which was aimed at increasing the plant’s production capacity to more than 90 000 units a year from about 50 000 units previously, and coincided with its announcement that it had secured an export contract for the new 3-Series.
The plant reopened in March this year with the launch of the new 3-Series.