Johannesburg — DAIMLER Buses Germany, a division of Daimler, has given the South African unit the green light to export buses and coaches to southern African markets, following a capital injection into the local plant that has led to the expansion of the bus line.

Jan Aichinger, divisional manager of Mercedes-Benz SA's bus and coach division, said yesterday that this was a "strategic move" that brought Mercedes-Benz SA closer to countries that had growth potential, given the investment in public transport infrastructure.

This move would probably boost bus and coach sales for Mercedes-Benz SA, which previously had no access to export bus markets.

Mercedes-Benz SA, which holds about 18% market share of the local bus market segment, sold 259 buses last year, down from 286 in 2008, according to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA.

Aichinger said distributors in southern African countries had previously been dealing with Mercedes-Benz SA's Brazilian sister company, which provides sales and after-sales service.

"It is logical to make SA the hub of southern African right-hand drive markets," Aichinger said. He said the move aimed to improve the lead time in terms of supplying buses, chassis, spare parts and after-sales support to these countries.

The southern African markets include Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Mauritius. Countries as far as Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda are also included.

Each of these countries has one distributorship, which in turn has a network of several outlets.

Aichinger said the local bus unit was leveraging on the 1m capital investment the company put into the plant in December.

This investment upgraded the East London complete knock down assembly plant, particularly the bus line.

Due to this capital injection, Aichinger said the company now produced four new models, bringing to seven the number of models manufactured in the East London plant, which has boosted capacity from 30 units a month, or about 340 units a year, to more than 100 units a month , or more than 1000 a year .

Aichinger said the company received an order of 26 buses from Zimbabwe last week and these would be built in SA.

This was the positive sign, he said, and represented the biggest order the company had received since formally making a foray into southern Africa.