Magic million can wait

MAZDA Australia managing director Doug Dickson believes that problems getting enough cars into Australia will prevent the industry from recording the expected million sales milestone this year.

Mr Dickson has told GoAuto that demand is strong enough to finally break through the million sales barrier, but it cannot be met by shipping or port capacity.

“Our economic advisers – and they must be right because we pay them a lot of money – are suggesting a little bit under a million this year,” said Mr Dickson. “One of the big reasons is the ability to supply the market. Right now, there are incredible logistics bottlenecks.

“We hear of the bottlenecks getting coal out of the ports of Queensland and things like that – and there are similar problems getting vehicles into Australia.

“There are more and more imports out of Japan (and) there’s actually a shortage of vessels. In any month, there are significant numbers of cars left on the wharves because there just aren’t enough ships.

“And when they get here most of the wharf areas are not sufficient to cope with the throughput. We are only just catching up.

“It is critical in some areas like Western Australia. They’ve had huge growth and they have tremendous problems.”

Mr Dickson said that there have been additional delays processing the imports because of a temporary shortage of car carriers in Australia.

“There has been a bit of a shortage of car carriers to ferry the vehicles around (because) there were many companies that had to take trailers offline to modify them to OH&S (Occupational Health and Safety) standards.

“Logistically, it’s an absolute nightmare.”

Despite the expected shortfall this year, Mr Dickson believes the Australian market will not drop below one million sales again in the future, with estimated growth of about two per cent per year.

And he expects Mazda Australia to retain its current market share of around 7.7 per cent, which sees the company as the fourth-highest-selling car-maker in the country, behind Toyota, Holden and Ford.

Last year, Mazda sold about 63,664 vehicles, which was down on the previous year’s 66,520, but sales have soared this year.

“We had a bit of a slowdown in the last half of last year and we found it very hard to get back momentum,” said Mr Dickson. “There was a slowdown in production and once the level of business falters it’s very hard to get it back together again.

“It got a bit tough in the last quarter of last year, but then we really hit our straps in the first quarter of this year and picked it all back up again.

“We’re looking at about a 70,000 result this year and then further increases from there will take place as we move into new segments. Over the next five years we’ll be moving towards 75,000 to 78,000.”