Organised every year by naamsa | the Automotive Business Council, SA Auto Week brings industry thought leaders together from across the country, the continent and the globe to discuss mutual automotive issues, discover development trends and explore ways of working more efficiently and effectively.

“This year’s Auto Week is particularly significant, because 2024 is the centenary of the South African automotive industry,” says Stellantis South Africa managing director, Mike Whitfield, who is also a past president of naamsa.

The theme of this year’s gathering is “Reimagining the Future, TOGETHER: Celebrating Automotive Heritage, Passion and Ingenuity”.

It is important for Stellantis to be part of SA Auto Week, because the company is about to become the eighth manufacturing OEM in South Africa after it breaks ground with its state-of-the-art automotive plant in the Coega Special Economic Zone in the Eastern Cape. In addition, some of the eight brands that it has in South Africa are among the first to have been sold in this country.

One of Stellantis’s key strategies is its Dare Forward 2030 plan, which aims to produce a million units a year, with 70% localisation and achieve 22% market share in Middle East and Africa by 2030.

The R3-billion Greenfields site at Coega, which will produce the PEUGEOT Landtrek 1-ton pick-up is a critical part of this plan, in tandem with the existing Stellantis manufacturing operations in North Africa: in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt.

The Coega plant is expected to directly employ 1 000 people and have an initial production target of 50 000 vehicles a year, when it becomes operational, with a capacity to scale production to 90 000 vehicles a year.

“This investment by Stellantis is testament to the ongoing public private partnership that has made the South African automotive sector the continental success it has been for decades and is owing to the enabling environment that government and agencies like the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, the Industrial Development Corporation, and the Coega Development Corporation have created.

“Investment in the automotive industry is a long-term process and there can be no investment of any nature without a legislative environment that ensures the playing fields are levelled, the interests of investors are protected, and that there’s a roadmap that guides all stakeholders,” he says. “It’s important to reflect this as we celebrate the centenary of this country’s motor industry at SA Auto Week in October.”