Volvo boss predicts bright future

Volvo Group’s World President and CEO says the company is solid in Australia

Volvo Group President and CEO Martin Lundstedt flew into Australia this week to turn the first sod on the company’s new $30m headquarters and dealership in Brisbane (which we reported on here) and meet Volvo Group Australia’s executive management team, customers, and workers at the company’s nearby assembly plant.

Mr Lundstedt also spoke at a press conference where he espoused the importance of the Australian market to the Volvo Group and said that the future of Volvo trucks in Australia was solid: “Volvo has been building trucks in Brisbane for more than 40 years and has a very bright future here,” Mr Lundstedt said.

“Wacol is the largest truck assembly plant in Australia and its dedicated workforce has enabled Volvo Group Australia to become the largest truck-builder in the country.

“I appreciate that manufacturing in Australia has been in decline for a number of years, as it has in many other countries, but the outlook for our business is strong.”

“We’ve invested more than $27m in Volvo Group assembly plant in recent years. That’s a sign of our great confidence in the Australian business.”

Volvo Group Australia’s President, Peter Voorhoeve, said local manufacturing is a competitive advantage in Australia.

“Australia is the toughest trucking environment in the world and it makes sense for us to build locally the specific trucks that the market demands,” Mr Voorhoeve said.

“In Australia trucks carry heavier loads for longer distances and in higher temperatures than anywhere else in the world.

“Our team has obviously developed a great understanding of what the Australian transport industry needs and the investment being made here demonstrates how positive we are about the future.”

Mr Lundstedt went to explain that Australia is significantly different from Europe in terms of size and population so the trucks need to be purpose-built here to suit that market: “The trucks for this market have specific needs and we have to address that. For example, there needs to be bigger fuel tanks under the chassis and therefore we need to create space and we have our engineers doing that. There are some significant differences here from other continents and markets in terms of legislation, weight, temperature, those sorts of things, but there are also a lot of similarities and engineers from other markets can share their knowledge.

“In terms of the engineering here, we can carry back that engineering to the Global structure and learn from the Australian market, so it’s very important from that perspective as well” he said.

Built in 1972 and continuously upgraded including the afore-mentioned $27m spend, the Wacol plant has a potential capacity of 16 trucks per day in combinations of both the Volvo and Mack brands.

Volvo boss predicts bright future

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