Volvo president confirms more electric trucks for Aus
Global President of Volvo Trucks, Roger Alm, recently embarked on a whirlwind tour of Australia. We caught up with him for a chat while he was visiting Linfox in Melbourne…
Roger Alm is the Executive Vice President Volvo Group and President Volvo Trucks; he has been a member of the Group Executive Board since January 2019 and been with Volvo since 1989.
Mr Alm was in Australia with Per-Erik Lindstrom, Senior Vice President and President Sales Area International, who is in charge of the area that includes Australia.
Mr Alm and Mr Lindstrom were in Australia visiting Volvo HQ in Wacol, Queensland, while also visiting important local regions and customers along with the President and CEO of Volvo Group Australia, Martin Merrick, and Vice President of Volvo Trucks Australia, Gary Bone.
Electric spearhead
We caught up with the elite group of Volvo hierarchy at Linfox in Melbourne, where they were doing a tour of the BevChain operation where the first Volvo FL Electric is operating.
“We’ve been over in Perth visiting a dealer over there and having a look at their operation and the investment they’ve made with their very nice dealership there,” Mr Alm said.
“I was there before COVID looking at what they were doing, and it’s nice to see it in operation.
“Then we went back to Brisbane and had a number of meetings with customers and saw the operation and how everything is going, and then we toured the factory and had a great Town Hall [meeting] with 500 people, all our employees in Brisbane.
“We came here to Melbourne and went to [Volvo truck dealership] CMV, which is a great facility – they’re really committed to the brand – and now we are here at Linfox, another very good customer of ours.”
Building momentum
Linfox has two of the new Volvo FL Electric trucks in its fleet: one doing the hard work for BevChain delivering beer around Melbourne, and one working in conjunction with Woolworths delivering fresh produce, also in metro Melbourne.
Asked how the electric trucks were going in Europe, Mr Alm said the company had just signed an agreement to deliver 44 trucks to Deutsche Post DHL Group to accelerate that company’s shift to zero-exhaust-emission vehicles.
DHL said it intends to intensify its transition to heavy electric trucks by deploying the 44 new electric Volvo trucks on routes in Europe.
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“We’re very proud of the co-operation we have with them and that will give us a good way forward and give us good recognition for what we are doing in sustainability growth,” said Mr Alm.
“We have serial production now of three models; in the [European] autumn we will add three additional trucks in the heavy range – the FH, FM and the FMX – then we will have six models in the electrification area and be able to offer them to customers.”
Local production
Asked when the first electric truck was going to be built in the company’s Queensland plant in Wacol, Mr Alm was circumspect but ensured us it would happen. “It will come,” he said.
“We have said that we will use the manufacturing system that we have, and we’re scaling up more and more… now we are producing the medium-duty [electric trucks] in France and we’ll start serial production of the heavy-duty trucks soon in Europe, and then we will take it factory by factory as the market demands.
“Australia is very important to us,” Mr Alm continued.
“We have been manufacturing trucks here for 50 years. We see manufacturing as important as it speaks to our commitment to the country to have local manufacturing.
“We see that as a good thing, giving a commitment to our customers – to have a supply base here, the whole value chain.”
Touching base
Mr Alm said he likes to travel to markets outside Europe to keep in touch with what is going on in important markets like ours.
“I like to be out in the operations where the people are and see the organisations and give them the recognition for the work they are doing,” he said.
“And Australia is a very important market for Volvo. We have good business here, throughout the whole Volvo Group. We’ve been here for many, many years.
“It’s a long way from Sweden but it’s important to get here and see the people and the customers,” Mr Alm concluded.
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