Scania Australia has announced that it has broken ground at its new Hope Valley branch that is set to be constructed south of Perth, Western Australia.
The construction of Scania’s 10th company-owned workshop and warehouse in Australia is another stop on its expansion path in the nation.
The new sales and service outlet aims to be open for business in 2025 to capitalise on the increasing sales of Scania buses, trucks and marine and industrial engines in the state.
“We have turn the first sod at what will become Scania Hope Valley, and we look forward to welcoming even more new customers to the Scania family in the West,” Scania Australia managing director Manfred Streit says.
“We continue to grow our business in Western Australia. We saw the need for additional company-owned sales and service capacity, as well as access to parts, to support customer uptime. The location of the new Hope Valley facility brings us closer to customers in the fast-growing southern Perth metropolitan area.”
Importantly, the Hope Valley site will be Scania Australia’s first true electric vehicle ready facility, with the infrastructure in place to handle battery electric vehicle charging needs and future capacity for high volume vehicle charging.
In addition to the new facility, Hope Valley will also house an enlarged regional parts warehouse of 3500sqm to service the needs of Scania customers in the west, including key mining customers located throughout WA and in the Pilbara region.
The workshop and parts warehouse is situated on a 19,000sqm block in a new industrial precinct, close to major road routes for easy access. A purpose-built pit is also designed to accept WA-style long vehicles without decoupling, while large crossovers and hardstands will allow for easier access for vehicles up to 36.5m long.
An office environment is also included in the designs, with dedicated customer areas and amenities for the on-site Scania team part of the facility.
Scania WA, SA and NT dealer director Michael Berti says the facility’s design has been undertaken with a focus on sustainability, with particular attention paid to how the site handles waste across the warehouse and workshop facilities.
“Scania in WA has been growing quickly over the past decade and we have attracted more customers both for on-road vehicles running intra-state as well as across to the eastern states, and also within the state’s burgeoning mining industry,” Berti says.
“These growing segments have required an expansion of services as well as a good deal of innovation from Scania Australia to meet the needs of its customers in a proactive way.
“Over the past decade we have devised onsite or fly-in service teams to ensure our more remote customers enjoy unrivalled uptime from their Scania service vehicles as well as heavy haul trucks and staff transfer buses.”
Berti says Scania opened a new dedicated parts distribution warehouse in Welshpool only around two years ago and it’s already surpassed all expectations.
Streit says the new addition to the Scania network of company-owned workshops and parts warehouses is a logical step to maintain high levels of customer uptime and to further encourage the uptake of repair and maintenance contracts, assisted by Scania’s ever-growing array of vehicle productivity and efficiency programmes.
“Scania has been a leader in connected services, which allows us to monitor very accurately how vehicles are performing and provide timely scheduled servicing which prevents unplanned downtime,” Streit says.
“By increasing the capacity for regular maintenance in our own workshops, our customers will have access to the most advanced in-service vehicle management available.
“Given WA’s geographic position, establishing a larger parts warehouse and additional service capacity south of Perth is a logical development for Scania to underpin business growth and continued customer success using our products.”