Toyota South Africa Manufacturing (TSAM) has officially restarted operations at its KwaZulu-Natal plant. Operations at the facility south of Durban were halted earlier this year due to damages caused by a flood. 

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“We communicated with Japan (Toyota Motor Corporation) on the night of the 12th April. I very quickly got a message back of support and an offer from them to do whatever they could to help. They dispatched a lot of experts to support us, helping us to repair, identify, diagnose and replace and then communicating with suppliers all over the world to source replacement parts,” says President and CEO of TSAM, Andrew Kirby.  

Locally Produced

Toyota South Africa Manufacturing produces a number of models at the facility in Prospecton. These include the Corolla Cross and Quest as well as Hilux, Hiace Ses’fikile and the Fortuner SUV. A number of Hino commercial vehicles are also assembled at the plant. Incidentally, the Corolla Cross was the very first hybrid vehicle to be manufactured locally. 

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Road to Recovery

Toyota’s local operations were first halted by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. This was followed by civil unrest in the KZN area last year. A devastating flood was just the latest disaster to befall KZN. It left much of the province in disrepair, with more than 4 000 vehicles damaged on site. However, according to TSAM, the costliest damage was to the infrastructure itself.

Committed to SA

“Despite these challenges, there was no impact at all to Toyota’s long-term future in South Africa. The commitment to rebuild this site has been incredible. We know that our recovery will not be smooth, but by next year we plan to be stronger and better than we were before.”

TSAM says that processes were carried out to ensure the plant will not be susceptible to similar devastation in future. “TSAM’s operations at Prospecton will actually be better and we plan to use this crisis to try and improve our equipment and upgrade where we can,” says Kirby.