SAO PAULO (Reuters) – This week, the Marcopolo bus body maker begins shipping a record volume of exports to the African continent to Côte d’Ivoire.
A vessel chartered exclusively for the operation leaves the Port of Paranaguá (PR) this afternoon with the first 109 urban buses of a total contract of 472 units, Marcopolo’s biggest deal in 2021, the value of which was not revealed.
The total order, made by the Ivorian government and which includes nearly 400 vehicles with a capacity to transport 80 passengers each, 50 articulated vehicles powered by natural gas, in addition to 25 minibuses, will be delivered by July of next year.
The announcement is an encouragement for the manufacturer from Rio Grande do Sul, which has been heavily affected by the effects of the social isolation measures, which have brought down orders for buses in Brazil and in several other important markets for the company.
According to data from Fenabrave, license plates for new buses in Brazil in the first 11 months of 2021 were 2.6% lower than in the same period last year, when sales had already dropped 33%, as a result of the pandemic.
Given this scenario, Marcopolo had a 9% drop in net revenue in the third quarter against a year earlier, with the company being forced to take collective vacations at some units in Brazil, given the prospects of weak demand and the end of deliveries for the state program Caminho da Escola.
According to Marcopolo’s Foreign Market commercial coordinator, Ângelo Luís Corsetti Oselame, the company still had to make last-minute adjustments to honor the contract, since problems in the supply chain, such as electronic components, made it look for other suppliers to finish the production of the buses.
Despite this, Oselame, who heads Marcopolo’s international operations from Dubai, said that the company should have more deliveries to the African and Middle East region, to where it has shipped around 5,000 vehicles in the last six years.
“We have other good projects underway in the region for 2022,” Oselame told Reuters.
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