Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania is acquiring two new warehouses in Western Australia and Victoria as the company continues to invest in spare parts within the country.
The acquisition will provide a higher level of first pick of spare and replacement parts.
The company’s Australian investment closely follows the start of construction of a new company-owned sales and service branch at Eastern Creek, NSW.
Located close to the company’s Campbellfield, Victoria, headquarters, a new 9000 m2 warehouse is set to come on stream in September this year.
The facility is described to be substantially bigger than the existing National Parts Warehouse which opened in 1992.
The second investment is in a new standalone warehouse facility in Perth, where 2000 m2 of parts storage will support Scania’s WA operations from July 2021.
This facility is required to service the growing Scania on and off-road population.
“We have taken this decision to expand our national and regional warehousing capacity as a result of the accelerated growth of sales of trucks, buses and engines over the past decade, and therefore the expected demands for replacement and service parts for these vehicles and engines over the next decade and beyond,” said Patrik Tharna, After Sales Director at Scania.
“We have doubled our truck sales and market share since 2010, and our bus market penetration remains extremely high, underscoring the need to supply many customers around the country with a reliable flow of parts, as well as the additional service capacity we are adding with our new company-owned branch at Eastern Creek,” Scarna said.
“We live in an increasingly uncertain world and we have all seen over the past year the impact on long-distance supply chains during a pandemic. With this added capacity for parts-holdings we anticipate being able to provide more parts, more quickly to more customers from these new warehouses,” he said.
When COVID-19 hit last year, Scania increased parts stocks at its National Warehouse in Victoria and at branch warehouses around the country to build resilience in case of major supply chain disruptions.
The manufacturer also secured capability to deliver directly to workshops and customers from other warehouses in Europe and Asia.
However, Scania said production capacity and container availability had, and still has, impacted on spare parts availability.
Ben Nicholson, National Parts Manager for Australia, and the After Sales team member responsible for the warehouse capacity expansion project, said that the new Regional Warehouse in Perth will build some additional resilience into Scania’s supply chain within Australia.
“When the new warehouses are online, we will improve spare parts availability reducing lead times, as well as being better at pre-picking kits to provide superior support to our own and our authorised independent dealer workshop operations,” Nicholson said.
The expansion will also require Scania to further grown the number of its employees working in Australia, which are now well over the 500 mark.
“And in line with Scania’s global and local drive towards a sustainable transport solution, the new National Warehouse comes equipped with solar panels on the roof. We will take all opportunities to continue to reduce our carbon footprint,” Tharna said.
Source: Scania