12/03/2024
Electric vehicle coup for Nelson Mandela Bay companies
Kar-Tainer, AE Manufacturing land contract to supply cassettes to facilitate export of cars from China to Europe
BY NTSIKELELO QOYO - 12 MARCH 2024
BIG NEWS: International solutions provider for vehicle containerisation Kar-Tainer announced the production of 1,000 cassettes by local partner AE Manufacturing, which will be shipped to China. Pictured from left are Baphelele Mhlaba from the premier’s office, Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber chief executive Denise van Huyssteen, mayor Gary van Niekerk, AE Manufacturing owner Andrio Els and Kar-Tainer International chief executive Richard Cox
Image: WERNER HILLS
Car transportation systems provider Kar-Tainer and its Deal Party-based partner, AE Manufacturing, have sealed the first two containers of cassettes that will be facilitating the transportation of completely built up (CBU) electric vehicles from China to mainland Europe.
The shipment is the advent of a project which over the next 23 weeks will see 999 units of the three-car cassettes developed by the Gqeberha manufacturer exported, with the hope of more in the pipeline.
While AE Manufacturing designs the vehicle carriers, the sheer volume of the framework agreement between Kar-Tainer and shipping behemoth Maersk Line, which will require 45,000 EVs to be hauled from China to Germany and Spain each year, means the bulk of the work has been offshored to Vietnam.
Speaking at the AE Manufacturing plant on Friday, Kar-Tainer chief executive Richard Cox said the mega contract needed close to 1,000 cassettes produced per week to meet its customer’s lead-up and packing schedule.
“We signed the first half of a contract with Maersk Shipping Line involving the fabrication of 12,858 of our three car cassettes, equivalent to 8,700 tonnes of steel,” Cox, who is based in the US, said.
“This contract, with one of the VW stable manufacturers, involves the export of 45,000 EV vehicles per year out of China to Europe, is probably the largest containerised move of vehicles of our time, and this is where working together comes in.”
The first option for the production of the cassettes was Vietnam.
However, efforts by AE Manufacturing which managed to rope in the Eastcape Training Centre through which some grant funding was secured, have laid out the groundwork to be handled by the Gqeberha manufacturer.
“We didn't have the productivity, the capacity, or the economics to try our first choice, which was to build all these cassettes here at AE Manufacturing,” Cox said.
“We needed extra capacity, which we found in Vietnam, but we were reluctant to see the whole of this initiative go abroad.
“Our local manager, Ian Pienaar, and the AE Manufacturing team, the Eastern Cape government, and the ETC put their heads together to find a solution.
“And as a result, AE Manufacturing has employed to date 40 more staff, with that likely to at least double as we add the fabrication requirements for the second half of this project.”
Cox said this initial phase was just the tip of the iceberg of the production they could bring to the country should the right conditions be created.
“The steel prices have come down enough for us to get at least the first 2,500 cassettes from here at a price we needed.
“We have the other half of this contract which has already been committed and is the same size again.
“We have three other projects we are working on with Maersk which will ensure that production at AE is guaranteed for the next year and a half.
“It lays the foundation of what can be done going forward and we hope there can be a mechanism which can be created so every time we have a new project we can say we have this going and we need it at this price, and it can be done.”
The milestone event was attended by Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber chief executive Denise van Huyssteen, the head of infrastructure investment at the project management office of the Eastern Cape premier, Baphelele Mhlaba, and Bay mayor Gary van Niekerk.
AE Manufacturing owner Andrio Els said they were hopeful the right deals would be put in place which could include grant funding and container discounts to ensure the viability of the project.
“With a new order it's 40 more jobs. But besides more work for our steel suppliers, there is more welding. Put that together it’s a multiplier of jobs for 400 people,” he said.
Van Huyssteen said businesses needed to continue looking for solutions to the challenges faced by manufacturing in the city such as the logistics crisis in rail, load-shedding and unplanned outages, and local service delivery failures.
“We have a local economy reinvention think-tank where we work with manufacturers and innovators across the city.
“We have work streams where we look at reinventing the manufacturing economy from electrolysing manufacturing to global gaps where we look at what the shortages around the world are for the Bay to [plug into],” she said.
HeraldLIVE
