Tinashe Makichi Business Reporter
The Industrial Development Corporation will adopt a contract assembly model at Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries as a way of boosting capacity which has fallen to below five percent. WMMI currently assembles Mazda brands.
In an interview with The Herald Business recently, IDC chief executive Mr Mike Ndudzo said Willowvale is facing numerous market pressures where the consumer is now looking at variety before making a decision to buy.
As a result IDC is currently engaging technical experts in order to find ways to change Willowvale’s current operating model and start operations on contract basis.
“We are looking at returning to our 1989 model where we had a contract assembly that gave consumers choice rather than churning out only one model.
“We think we cannot be sustainable under the current market demands using the current model because consumers are now looking for variety and considering that we are in the market competing with second hand vehicles. To bypass that we are going to do contract assembly which is actually what we were doing before 1989,” said Mr Ndudzo.
Willowvale Mazda was established in 1961 when Ford Motor Corporation of Canada imported a complete assembly plant to assemble the Ford ranges for the then Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and was forced to close down after UDI in 1965.
IDC bought the company in 1967 for contractual assembly and franchise holders were allocated foreign currency for the importation of motor vehicle kits, which the company then assembled on their behalf. These franchises included Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Nissan, Toyota, BMW and Mazda.
In 1986 Government instituted reforms for the industry, under which franchises were to be held by assemblers under a vertical integration policy and Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries became the distributor of the passenger and commercial vehicles under Government direction.
Subdued foreign currency restricted production, saw the company engage a technical partner who could provide the product as well as transfer of technology. Mazda Motor Corporation of Japan was selected as the technical partner and a joint venture agreement was signed in 1989.
Willowvale’s assembly line is one of the most flexible in the world capable of producing any automotive products that include passenger vehicles, light and heavy commercial vehicles and tractors.
Mr Ndudzo said Willowvale will take time to come online because certain fundamentals need to be corrected.
“ For Willowvale to take off it has to be a coherent package where we need a to have a certain threshold and we need to have a certain local content where we get some of the spares locally rather than bringing the whole car broken down from overseas.
“We cannot just advocate for the resumption of operations at Willowvale because Willowvale operates when other complimentary industries are operating as well .Some of the componentry suppliers have since closed. There should also be customer financing to justify the opening of Willowvale,” said Mr Ndudzo.
He said IDC has reconsidered its decision to dispose of Deven Engineering through its subsidiary Motec Holdings but rather signed an agreement with Yutong to start assembling buses at Deven assembly plant.
Motec Holdings had its subsidiary Deven up for sale in trying to mobilise capital to enable IDC (the parent company) to effectively execute its re-defined role.
He said IDC also looking for a partner for Amtec after reconsidering the decision to dispose of the company.
“We are trying to find a partner for Amtec, not to buy us off, infact we wanted to sell it before but we are looking for a partner to bring new workshop equipment, new skills base and better stocking and improve the standards of workshops. We are looking for someone with capacity to raise working capital,” said Mr Ndudzo.