The first phase of a R2-billion investment to upgrade BMW South Africa’s manufacturing facilities at its Rosslyn plant has begun, says Ian Robertson, the company’s managing director.
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The first phase of a R2-billion investment to upgrade BMW South Africa’s manufacturing facilities at its Rosslyn plant has begun, says Ian Robertson, the company’s managing director.
According to Robertson, the first R500-million development – a new state-of-the-art pretreatment electrocoat plant to complement BMW SA’s existing water-based paint facility – is already under way.
“Technologically, it’s a first in the world and we’ll start commissioning it in December this year. We’re using technology that has been developed in Germany by Eisanmann,” Robertson was quoted as saying in on Monday.
Robertson said this first phase development would allow BMW to build a new body shop for a new model and pave the way for the R2-billion investment.
The investment was designed to increase the plant’s capacity to 60 000 units a year and was in preparation for the production of “future BMW models”, largely for the export market, he said.
BMW SA announced at the end of last year that the bulk of the capital investment would take place in the following 24 months, well ahead of “any new model plan for the country”, the report said.
The investment would result in a substantial increase in BMW’s export capacity to R50 billion worth of exports from South Africa over the life cycle of future models, Robertson added.
Robertson said the major part of the capital investment would be in a massive new preparation plant, but substantial extensions would also be made to the body manufacturing and assembly complex.
The number of employees at BMW’s plant would remain at about 3 000 and the major impact of the investment on jobs would be “downstream in BMW’s expanding component supplier network”.
BMW SA’s latest investment follows its injection of R800 million into the Rosslyn plant in 1998 and more than R500 million over the past three years.
