Hino SA had a very successful year with regard to sales and is now aiming to increase its volume in the local market by 10% in 2013.

“We are happy with our performance in 2012 as we not only retained our second position behind Mercedes-Benz in the total truck and bus market, with a share of 13.1%, but also continued to dominate the medium segment, with the introduction of our new Hino 300 Series range giving us strong sales impetus,” says the vice president of Hino SA, Dr Casper Kruger.

“This was our best year-on-year performance since the global economic downturn hit in 2009. We have been able to improve our sales each year since then and in 2012 we had volume growth of 7.1%, which improved our share of the total market by 0.4% compared to 2011.

“We not only increased our sales volume in the overall truck and bus market, but also in each segment, going up by 7.7% in mediums, 6% in heavies and 7.2% in extra-heavies.

“We are particularly proud of the way we managed our run-out of the previous Hino 300 Series and the run-in of the new line-up, which included additions to the model range in response to customer requests.

“We did, however, have some backlog during the year, especially in the first six months, in terms of meeting demand as Hino’s own production and that of its component suppliers were still recovering from the effects of the natural disasters that hit Japan and Thailand in 2011,” adds Kruger.

Hino SA put a great deal of focus on its customer services and dealer network last year, with the aim of improving all aspects of service levels and cutting turnaround time for services and repairs. The latter project includes a hotline so Hino’s senior management is kept informed on an ongoing basis of problems that are keeping trucks off the road, be they parts supply or technical issues.

Looking to 2013 on the sales front, Kruger says he expects a similar market to last year, with total sales for trucks and buses of around 28 000 units, with fairly strong medium and heavy truck sales and concern about the extra-heavy truck segment, where there is now some excess capacity with the commissioning of the Durban-Johannesburg pipeline and a move by Transnet to increase its share of the freight market.

Picture: Vice president of Hino SA, Dr. Casper Kruger