The next few years in South Africa should be good ones for the bus and coach industry, Harry Teifel, marketing manager of the Mercedes-Benz bus and coach division, said yesterday.

Teifel, speaking at the official opening of the bus assembly line at Ikhwezi Truck Tech in East London, said the mixture of the 2010 soccer World Cup and taxi recapitalisation as well as possible improvements to the public transport market all boded well for the country's coach and bus industry.

"South Africa has to put a great deal of effort into improving public transport to achieve international standards. What was offered to the South African commuting public 20 to 30 years ago is no longer acceptable today," he told a group of about 40 dealers, component suppliers and major bus operators.

With government seeking to meet public transportation needs and gearing towards the 2010 World Cup, the bus market is expected to grow substantially above the current 1000 units annually, Teifel said.

Bus chassis were last produced on the Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicle line in 2000, when it was decided to integrate South African production into the global manufacturing network.

According to Teifel, the work done by Ikhwezi in assembling Mercedes-Benz trucks and Freightliners for the company led to a decision to reintroduce bus chassis assembly.

"Moving to local assembly of most chassis will provide world-class bus chassis with greater affordability and shorter lead-times for South African bus operators.

"This is an ideal situation for operators when it comes to economies of scale - by using common parts on different models, we are able to increase the volumes in the supply of components, while at the same time reducing costs," he said.

Another benefit was that people trained on many of the components would be familiar with the same components on different Mercedes-Benz models.

New jobs and further skills enhancement were created by the addition of bus production at Ikhwezi.
The 20-station assembly line was refurbished with specialised tools and hanging equipment.

A major factor to the decision to produce locally was the high level of sophistication of current and prospective bodybuilding partners in South Africa offering versatility with extremely high quality finish.

Bus operators have a wide choice of locally approved Mercedes-Benz bodybuilders including Busaf, Busscar, Caio/ Busmark 2000, De Haans, and Marcopolo.

The buses to be built at the East London plant are in a completely knocked down format compared with most of the trucks arriving in the city in semi-knocked down form.