The strong recovery in the South African commercial vehicle market continued for the fourth consecutive month, registering an 8.9% year-on-year growth for November to reach 2 976 units.

This is according to the latest combined results released by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa), Associated Motor Holdings (AMH) and Amalgamated Automobile Distributors (AAD).

“When looking only at the Heavy, Extra Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Bus segments, the recovery is even more impressive at 16.4% growth,” said Torbjörn Christensson, President of Volvo Group Southern Africa.

When compared to November 2014, the biggest recovery was in the Extra Heavy segment at 23.6%, to reach a total of 1 245 sales. Heavy Commercials grew by 9.4% to 591 units. Medium Commercial Vehicle sales declined by 3% to 1 028 units, while Bus sales were 11.8% down to 112 units.

On a year-to-date basis, the total market is on -3% at 28 108 units, which is an improvement on the -4.8% and -4.3% rates reported in the previous two months.

“As was the case throughout the year, Heavy Commercials are still outperforming the rest of the market on a year-to-date basis, growing by 1.8% to 5 080 units,” explained Christensson.

Although there has been a significant recovery in the Extra Heavy segment, the year-to-date figures show a 2.8% decline to 12 476 units. Both the MCV and BUS segments have also declined 4.9% to 10 024 units and 10.6% to 1 017 units respectively.

“With only one sales month left to go, the commercial vehicle market is expected to finish the year strongly. However we foresee that the market will remain under pressure into 2016 due to the difficult underlying economic conditions,” concluded Christensson.