• Suzuki SA will complete a move to its new premises on 1 September 2020.
• The move follows an increase in demand for vehicles and car parts.
• Suzuki first broke the 1000 sales barrier in August 2017.
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On 1 September 2020, Suzuki South Africa will have completed its move to a new head office just down the road from the current one. The move was inspired by increased sales figures and demand for parts to be made available at a faster rate.
André Venter, divisional manager for sales and marketing at Suzuki Auto South Africa, says: "We are moving to a new facility to better service our fast-growing South African customer base.
"Since breaking the 1000 units a month barrier in August 2017, we have broken our own sales record multiple times, necessitating the move to a larger facility that can hold more parts and more efficiently support the larger car parc."
In July 2020, Suzuki again surpassed the 1000-mark when 1213 new vehicles were sold - 1200 of which were via the dealer network. Suzuki says its newly introduced S-Presso accounted for 325 units, and the Swift and Jimny for 323 and 150 units, respectively. In total, Suzuki South Africa has 11 vehicles in its local portfolio.
2020 Suzuki Swift (MotorPress)
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Bigger facility
Suzuki SA says that the new warehouse facility is joined to its new corporate head office and offers 1600m2 of floor space - an increase of 42% over the previous warehouse facility. A mezzanine level adds 655m2 of floor space.
In theory, the high-density storage and large dispatch area will allow Suzuki to maintain the cost of its repair and service parts and offer 24-hour turnaround times on most orders.
Venter concludes: "We have tasked our engineers to design the warehouse for the most efficient storage of parts and components, so they have increased the rack height by 20% to add additional storage space. With this extra space, we were able to consolidate all our national warehousing space into this one facility for more efficient and more cost-effective storage.
"With the new facility, we can dispatch parts orders to dealers every day. We have also introduced an order-and-pick-up service to dealers in Gauteng, which makes the parts available in 24 hours or less."
2020 Suzuki S-Presso (MotorPress)
Compiled by: Charlen Raymond