Capital Equipment News August 2017

VECV won the prestigious Tipper of the Year award in India in 2012.

VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV), a joint venture of the Volvo Group and Eicher Motors Ltd, has launched its Eicher range of trucks in South Africa.

Three of the Pro series models for South Africa are the Pro 6025T, a 10 m³ tipper; the Pro 6016, a 16 t GVM freight carrier; and the Pro 3000, an 8,5 t heavy duty offering for haulage.

V E Commercial Vehicles (VECV), a decade-old joint venture between the Volvo Group and Indian headquartered Eicher Motors Ltd, used the recently-ended TruckX 2017 to officially introduce its Eicher range of trucks to the South African commercial vehicle market. To set the ball rolling, the joint venture has already set up its South African base in the form of a 100% wholly-owned subsidiary, VECV South Africa. Despite a cutthroat trading environment in the South African commercial vehicle market with several existing players already jostling for a share of the market, which is already notably in rough waters, Surender Singh Rajpurohit, vice president and country head at VECV South Africa, believes that there is still space for a new brand in the local commercial vehicle market, especially a good product which is competitively priced and comes with no extra frills. It is significant to note that VECV South

Africa launches its local ventures at a time when the truck market has just experienced a 2,8% decline in sales during June to record a total of 1 652 units during the month. The result brought the total for the first half of 2017 to 8 888 units, a decrease of 2,8% compared with the first half results of the previous year, according to joint results published by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa, Associated Motor Holdings and Amalgamated Automobile Distributors. In the first phase of its introduction, Eicher has its eyes on the Heavy Commercial Vehicle (HCV) segment with a three-model line-up of its Pro Series range. The HCV segment is regarded as the “bread and butter” of the local truck market, but is not enjoying the best of times at present on the back of a 2,3% decline to 2 628 unit sales in the first half of 2017, compared with the same period in 2016.

Surender Singh Rajpurohit, vice president and country head at VECV South Africa.

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS AUGUST 2017 7