Jul 15, 2015 Toyota, TSAM, Taxi, manufacturing, Economy, Localisation, Components, Jobs
Roy Cokayne
More than 165 new jobs have been created in the automotive component supplier chain by Toyota South Africa Motors - increasing the localisation of parts in its Quantum/Ses’fikile mini bus taxi vehicle. This comes with the transition from semi knocked down (SKD) to completely knocked down (CKD) production of the vehicle at its plant in Prospecton.
In excess of 400 new jobs were created by the more than R550 million investment by Toyota in its new CKD plant.
Bruce Avern Taplin, Vice President for Quantum at TSAM, said increasing the localisation of parts in the model resulted in Toyota engaging the services of 25 SA suppliers, who together supplied an additional 61 parts to the vehicle. These included seats, glass, wire harnesses, batteries, roof linings, instrument panels, exhausts and starters.
Taplin said the suppliers invested a total of R95 million in their own facilities. “It is also our intention to further increase the local content at a later stage.”
Johan van Zyl, the CE of Toyota Europe and Africa region, said the investment in the plant included R24 million with suppliers for the development of parts and tooling and R74 million by Toyota in the first phase of the project to assemble Quantum/Ses’fikile models on a SKD basis. He was speaking at the official opening of the plant, which now employs 300 people and produces one mini bus every 20 minutes.
Van Zyl said SA was a very important market to Toyota globally in terms of supply to the rest of the world and it served as a gateway to the African continent.
Taplin said with SKD assembly, the body of the vehicle was imported to SA fully assembled and painted, with many other parts partially assembled. The transition to CKD involved the importation of the body panels, which were then welded together in the plant, painted and assembled to the fitting parts. To achieve this, TSAM need to construct a new facility and had chosen to increase the number of local parts it used.
He added the change from SKD to CKD production and the manual nature of the plant operation resulted in the creation of an additional 260 jobs, with 45% of the new recruits young people. This required a very comprehensive T11 Million training programme.
Rob Davies, DTI Minister, said the official opening of the plant was taking place at a time when, contrary to what might be read in some newspapers, foreign direct investment across a range of manufacturing sectors continued to be very buoyant. “In the automotive sector alone, our industrial policies have supported investments of about R24.5 billion in the period since the launch of the APDP in January 2013 and they [the auto sector] are confidently anticipating that there will be a number of further investments in this sector in the near future.”
Davies said the event marked the restoration of CKD manufacturing in the mini bus tax vehicle sector, after a lull in the period from 2004 to 2011. He said Government, in consultation with industry and labour, agreed on a transitional arrangement in which SKD manufacturing would be supported under the APDP - on condition that this was a transitional arrangement and that there would be a movement towards CKD manufacturing by the target date of April 30 this year. “This target has been met by Toyota.”
Davies said the CKD programme provides the opportunity for much deeper levels of manufacturing, many more jobs were created and there were also many more opportunities for local supplier development.
The Minister added that in 2012 his department established the people’s carriers automotive investment scheme (P-AIS) as a sub component of the AIS in the APDP. He said this incentive was designed to grow and develop the sector in the area of transport vehicle manufacturing and provided a non taxable cash grant of between 20 and 35% of the value of qualifying investments in productive assets approved by the department.
Davies said this scheme has resulted in support for three mini bus assembly projects, with Toyota’s project by far the biggest, involving a total investment of R158 million and supporting 680 direct jobs. He declined to identify the other two recipient manufacturers.
Davies said this particular project was also conceived within the framework of the Africa taxi programme, with a view to producing vehicles that would find a market not only in SA, but also elsewhere on the African continent.
Dave Finch, Senior VP manufacturing group at TSAM, said the design of the plant was set up for 9 600 units a year, but Toyota was looking at trying to increase the capacity of the plant to meet demand. It is considering exporting its locally produced Quantum/Ses’fikile mini bus taxi vehicles to markets on the African continent.
Van Zyl said the first phase of the project was to just look at the local domestic market, although it was currently already supplying the model to markets such as Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, and Lesotho.
Van Zyl added that as progress was made with trade agreements in Africa, TSAM would then progress with CKD exports of this model to those markets as well.
Mar 03, 2026 0
Mar 02, 2026 0
Feb 27, 2026 0
Feb 26, 2026 0
Feb 25, 2026 0