The Sunday News
Wilson Dakwa, Business Reporter
AMALGAMATED Motor Corporation (AMC) has launched a new branch called AMC Suzuki Bulawayo in a bid to increase its market share.
AMC group chief operations and human resources director Mr Herbert Takawira said the new branch was a result of the combination of AMC’s vehicles and motor cycles subsidiaries.
“It was prudent to open a new branch in Bulawayo because Suzuki vehicles have instantly hit the Zimbabwean and South African markets. In South Africa, one in every four vehicles on the road is a Suzuki and we want the same scenario in Zimbabwe because we need to move with the times.
“We specifically chose Bulawayo so that people from the second largest city have easy access to our vehicles. Bulawayo is also the former industrial hub and given that Bulawayo is closer to Botswana and South Africa, most people prefer driving to these destinations for business and other purposes.
Hence, we believe that people in Bulawayo have great potential to buy Suzuki vehicles,” said Mr Takawira on Friday.
AMC Suzuki Bulawayo is a subsidiary of Amalgamated Motor Corporation (AMC), a wholly owned Scotia Holdings company.
Before the amalgamation, Suzuki Bulawayo used to deal specifically in Suzuki motor bike sales, service and spare parts sales with its clients being industries, banks, schools and Non-Governmental Organisations.
Mr Takawira said the new development was a product of business process re-engineering that saw AMC amalgamating two operations in Bulawayo to bring them under one roof partly as a business survival strategy and to ensure that customers continue to receive the same quality service they had been accustomed to at Suzuki Bulawayo and AMC Bulawayo.
He also highlighted that AMC has since realised that technicians need to be multi-skilled by combining motor bike and motor vehicle technicians together so as to offer efficiency through technology sharing.
Mr Takawira acknowledged that increase in ex-Japanese cars in the country had negatively affected local car dealers.
He also added that AMC had not been spared from the foreign currency shortages challenges.
“AMC has been performing extremely well over the past year although in the past five years or so, there were money supply challenges in the market and as such this had a lot of negative effects on businesses, us included. This is why some blue chip companies in Bulawayo had to scale down because of the economy but we are quite hopeful that with the calls for investment by Government, business is going to be on the upward trend,” he said.
Association of Businesses Association of Zimbabwe chief executive officer Mr Victor Nyoni, who was the guest of honour at the launch, said AMC Suzuki Bulawayo will likely attract more investment into the former industrial hub.
“AMC Suzuki Bulawayo will create a One Stop Shop where clients can service and buy spares for their vehicles and bikes. This investment is also a declaration of the company’s confidence at a time when efforts are being made to revive Bulawayo’s industries. As you may know, industries make use of a lot of vehicles and AMC has made an investment which will make vehicles and servicing easily accessible. Such investments have an effect of attracting more investments, said Mr Nyoni.-@WilsonDakwa1
