Isuzu Truck South Africa (ITSA) is building business and creating economies of scale into the future, says Craig Uren.

ITSA is involved in nine countries/territories in Africa. “The business won’t necessarily be sustainable if we only look at our own market in South Africa. Big multinational companies need to have critical mass and the markets,” says Uren.

Isuzu Motors sub-Saharan Africa (IMSA), created in January this year, is located in the same Johannesburg building as ITSA. “They have a specific focus on their territories because the dynamics are so different,” he says. “It’s good that we’re in the same building; we have different focuses and different territories, but Isuzu is looking at the continent of Africa by virtue of what the consumer needs in each territory. You can’t have one solution that covers all of it.”

Uren explains that, while there are opportunities in Africa, timing, quantities and degrees of success are largely unknown. “If you’re ready, and have a business and a process that can be scaled up and down quite quickly, you can make use of those benefits.”

ITSA supplies the odd truck to Kenya, a country Uren says will outsell South Africa this year. “We’ll do around 4 500 units, but Kenya will probably do at least 5 000; East Africa is flying. From an IMSA perspective, they have their own source of products that are specific to those territories. The assembly operation in Kenya is quite significant and equal to the volumes we do here.”

African markets are challenged by a lack of commonality, he says. “We are starting to provide common business solutions, used here, into those areas in terms of vehicle body, model, and specification. They want the same after-sales service, which, in Africa, has never really happened before.”

“As ITSA, our roles and how we act and present as a company and how we interact with our suppliers and dealers has had to become commercially astute. This is business we’re talking about, not trucks. It’s an enterprising business model that needs thought. While there is a lot of doing, we need a lot more thinking around what we need to do. That’s what changes the value and that’s what moves the mind. Our enterprise is correctly scaled at this point in time and we’re looking at the graphs so that we can run with it on a scale basis.”