JEDDAH, 12 November 2007 — Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. said yesterday that it would take further strategic measures to boost its presence across Saudi Arabia. “With the cooperation of Alhamrani United Company (AUC), our effort will be to improve our network of branches and service centers,” Colin Dodge, senior vice president, general overseas market operations, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., (NMC) told Arab News.
Dodge, who headed a four-member NMC delegation, cut a cake with Ahmed A. Alhamrani, chief operating officer at Alhamrani United Company, to mark the opening of Nissan-AUC’s branch at the new Auto Mall in north Jeddah.
“This is our 54th branch in the Kingdom,” Alhamrani said, adding that the company will open a new branch in Baha in due course. It opened a mega service center in Riyadh and followed it up with a new branch in Jubail a year ago.
The NMC delegation included Gilles Normand, corporate vice president, general overseas market, Toru Hasegawa, managing director, and Mustansir Lakdawalla, general manager, Nissan Middle East FZE.
Dodge said Nissan was planning a new Renault-Nissan plant in Morocco, which will become operational in 2010. “We are also going ahead with a plant in Chennai (in south India) to produce 200,000 Nissan cars and 200,000 Renault cars by 2010,” Dodge added.
“Our Infiniti, sport utility vehicles and pickups have been doing very well in the Saudi and Gulf markets,” he said. “We now need to focus on our small car segment,” he added.
“With the excellent cooperation of AUC that we have, we will focus on having more dealers in the interest of increasing our sales,” he said.
Nissan is one of the world’s leading automakers, with an annual production of over three million vehicles worldwide and generating multibillion dollar sales.
AUC is the sole agent and distributor for Nissan’s complete range of vehicles and spare parts in the Kingdom.
The annual level of Nissan vehicles sales in the Kingdom is currently between 45,000 and 50,000 vehicles.
“AUC’s future plans include the addition of more branches and service centers, along with the enhancement of improvement of customer service facilities to achieve the desired goal of increasing our market share and sales volume,” Alhamani said.
