Shipment marks return of Proton to South Africa after 10 year hiatus
Following Proton’s appointment of the CMH Group to be the official distributer in South Africa in April, a shipment of cars departed from Westport, Klang on Friday 27 May, to arrive in Durban, South Africa, in July this year. The cars are Proton X50, Proton X70 and Proton Saga, and will be the first Proton cars to be sold there since 2012.
“This shipment marks another significant milestone achieved by Proton this year. South Africa is a matured and competitive market, but we are confident the Proton X50, Proton X70 and Saga have the right combination of features and value to compete with other brands there,” said Steven Xu, Director of International Sales, Proton.
“CMH Group, are working diligently to prepare their distribution network and the current plan is to launch our models by the end of the third quarter this year. Ahead of this, several members of the CMH Group visited Malaysia last week to have discussions with our team and visit dealers as well as the Tanjung Malim plant”, he added.
Proton’s export sales growth this year has been powered by the Proton X50 and X70 with both showing an increase in demand of 77% and 31% respectively. For the first quarter of this year, total export sales have grown by 175% over the same period in 2021 and that number is expected to increase as the company takes aim at growing export sales by more than 300% by the end of the year.
Vital to achieving the target is the growth in assembly (KD) operations overseas. Currently, such operations are running in Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh with Sri Lanka set to join the list in the second half of 2022. Over the last three years and despite difficult market conditions caused by Covid-19, Proton has shown an increase in its percentage of Malaysia’s overall vehicle exports, from 12.8% of total exports in 2019, to 30.2% in 2020 and 61.0% in 2021.
“Growth in export sales is vital to Proton being able to achieve its long-term goals. The company will need to explore more new markets to push its volume growth rate and we are making the necessary investments both here at Tanjung Malim and in our overseas operations to ensure we are ready to move quickly to exploit any new opportunities,” said Roslan Abdullah, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Proton.
