American carmaker Ford, has just completed assembling the Ford Ranger in its Silverton plant in Tshwane, South Africa.
Ford has completed Job 1 of the Ford Ranger and it is announced in the news that the production comes after a multi-billion rand investment.
The American automobile manufacturer, Ford, forked out R16 billion to produce the new-generation Ford Ranger bakkie to aid its South African operations and its suppliers.
According to a local engineering news publication, Ford has also completely knockdown operations in Vietnam and Cambodia, with plants in the US and Argentina to begin production in 2023.
Ford IMG operations director Andrea Cavallaro says capacity at the Silverton plant has been increased to 200 000 units per year.
At the present moment, it’s only the Volkswagen Amarok and Ranger double cab bakkies that are being produced at the Silverton plant.
“That will have an impact on what we produce here, but we are still sketchy on what that impact will be – 10%? 20%?,” said Cavallaro to Engineering News.
“It is a bit of a strange announcement, and we’ll have to see what engineering is required to meet all of those conditions,” Cavallaro tells Engineering News Online.
“They have changed the conditions and brought it forward.”
Cavallaro also touched on the fact that Ford is working hard on a Ranger plug-in hybrid, which will, from its inherent engineering, be able to meet more strict emission standards.
“Europe is really important for us,” says Cavallaro. “And with our production footprint globally we have the flexibility to move things around.”
“We have invested here and the last thing we would do is not use the capacity here.”
With these plans and targets unveiled by Ford, the company faces challenges and some of them include the ongoing load shedding which continues to hurt the South African manufacturing sector.
Phase 2 will also include battery solutions, as the plant now runs 24 hours a day in a three-shift operation.
Looking at the numbers, Ford says 873 751 previous-generation Rangers were produced at the Silverton plant in Tshwane and nearly 603 000 cars were shipped to more than 100 global markets, while 271 000 units were produced for South Africa.
