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Speaker 1: Information at the Big Investment Conference this week that Cherry

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Speaker 1: now expects it's first South African made cars be running

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Speaker 1: out of their new factory here next year. They've bought

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Speaker 1: a business factory in Swine. Renee Murtilal is the CEO

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Speaker 1: of the National Association of Automotive Components and Allied Manufacturers. Renee,

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Speaker 1: good evening, Good to chat again. I mean, Cherry's been

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Speaker 1: growing quickly, so of other Chinese brands. How strong is

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Speaker 1: the investment case for them to build their cars here

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Speaker 1: when Chinese production is so strong.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, evening to you and your listeners of Stephen. Look,

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Speaker 2: I think there is still a strong business case for

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Speaker 2: the investment. The reality is that they have very quickly

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Speaker 2: established a very sizable domestic market in the country. I mean,

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Speaker 2: if we just look at this quarter long they sold

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Speaker 2: more than sixteen thousand vehicles across the various brands within

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Speaker 2: the Cherry group. And as the whole kind of adage goes,

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Speaker 2: what a strong domestic market, the case for investment becomes

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Speaker 2: quite quite attractive. There is also policy reasons why I

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Speaker 2: think long term it makes sense for them to be

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Speaker 2: producing and yeah, you've got a good point. The Chinese

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Speaker 2: production efficiencies make them really competitive, but there's distance to market,

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Speaker 2: there's opportunities for export, particularly in the region. South Africa

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Speaker 2: is a right hand market, as is for example, the UK,

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Speaker 2: so I think long term business case is there, But

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Speaker 2: we would obviously love to see Cherry come in and

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Speaker 2: do deep levels of production, make use of the component

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Speaker 2: base that Nisson has built up over time and other

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Speaker 2: component manufacturers, and I think that's where we will see

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Speaker 2: win win Cherry and of course economic advantages for the country.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I do wonder if just from a simple

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Speaker 1: marketing point of view, if you can say that yes,

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Speaker 1: your cars are cheap and made here, it'll help them

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Speaker 1: stand out of it. I think standing out is going

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Speaker 1: to be the tough thing to do in this in

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Speaker 1: this market for a while.

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Speaker 2: I think their marketing teams are already doing a really,

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Speaker 2: really good job, and the reality is them and other

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Speaker 2: emerging brands have come into the market with technology and

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Speaker 2: I suppose competitiveness factors that have seen South African consumers

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Speaker 2: take to those brands. I think for us at the

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Speaker 2: component's constituency, we welcome the investment. We look forward to

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Speaker 2: seeing how our own South African based component producers can

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Speaker 2: slip into that value chain, partner with the cherry technologies

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Speaker 2: and their own Tier one supplier base. I think they've

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Speaker 2: got some fantastic technologies, particularly in the NYV space, and

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Speaker 2: for us, the real kind of advantage will be a

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Speaker 2: ability to partner with some of that emerging technology and

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Speaker 2: to try and build our own ANYV component production base,

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Speaker 2: which is nascent, it's growing. We've got some good things

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Speaker 2: happening in the space, but this one has the ability

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Speaker 2: to translate into the greater spread of component production.

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Speaker 1: Renee, I must just ask them, afraid. I mean, lots

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Speaker 1: of talk this week about electric cars. We speak to

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Speaker 1: Volvo last night, but also because of higher fuel prices,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, they use fewer components that don't get services.

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Speaker 1: Often things don't seem to break quite as much. Do

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Speaker 1: you worry of the sort of long term future of

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Speaker 1: your industry as the automotive components and allowed manufacturers? I mean,

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Speaker 1: is that something that worries you that, in fact, electric

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Speaker 1: cars if they become say fifty percent of the market,

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Speaker 1: and that'll probably happen one day, over a long period

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Speaker 1: of time, there'll be less demount for your services.

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Speaker 2: Actually, that doesn't worry me. What does worry me is

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Speaker 2: that the country's got a kind of stuck in the

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Speaker 2: mud localization or domestic component production percentage. It hasn't really

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Speaker 2: grown over the last ten to fifteen years. And if anything,

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Speaker 2: we've seen over the last two years as the domestic

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Speaker 2: sales or vehicle market has recovered a slightly regression in

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Speaker 2: the component localization percentage. Why does the change in technology

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Speaker 2: does not really bother me. I think component produces, by

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Speaker 2: virtue of how a car is, as symboled globally, respond

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Speaker 2: to technology changes all the time. Even in the isoor

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Speaker 2: hybrid space, variants change every seven years. That's a model

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Speaker 2: of life cycle, and with sufficient time and planning, component

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Speaker 2: produces respond to technology changes as the OEM requires that.

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Speaker 2: Besides that, any of the specific technologies, there are parts

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Speaker 2: of a vehicle that will always remain technology agnostic. A

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Speaker 2: seat is a seat, you can can get the analogy.

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Speaker 2: But besides that, in the end space, we've actually we've

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Speaker 2: got the opportunity for localization of some of those specific components. Traction, motors,

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Speaker 2: batteries have been spoken about a lot. The region's critical

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Speaker 2: mineral advance. He claimed itself to being able to capture

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Speaker 2: a greater production of that component base than we currently do.

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Speaker 1: Renee Mortillou, thanks so much, really to appreciate it. The

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Speaker 1: seer of the National Association of Automotive Components and Allied Manufacturers,