SCANIA Australia has broken dirt on construction of its 10th factory-owned sales and service outlet with the go-ahead for a new Perth complex. The development is in response to record national sales and booming business in Scania trucks, buses, and marine and industrial engines in Western Australia. 

In 2023, Scania delivered more trucks than ever before in Australia, setting a new benchmark of 1383 vehicles.

The new complex, in the Perth southern suburb of Hope Valley, aims to be open for business in 2025.

L/R: Manfred Streit, MD and Michael Berti, WA dealer director

On site to turn the first sod, Scania Australia managing director Manfred Streit said the start of construction on Scania Hope Valley will welcome even more new customers to the Scania family in the west.

“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,’ he said.

“The location of the new Hope Valley facility brings us closer to customers in the fast-growing southern Perth metropolitan area.”

In addition to a new sales and service facility, Hope Valley will be the site of an enlarged regional parts warehouse of 3500 square metres that will service the needs of Scania customers in the west, including key mining customers located throughout the state and in the busy Pilbara region.

The workshop and parts warehouse are well situated on a spacious and prominent 19,000 square metre block in a new industrial precinct. The site is close to major road routes for easy access, especially by larger combinations, along with a purpose-built pit that is designed to accept WA-style long vehicles without decoupling. 

Front/Left: Marco Mosole from the site developer SanMar

Large crossovers and hardstands will provide ease of access for vehicles up to 36.5m long.

Also included in the facility design is a purpose-built office environment with dedicated customer areas and impressive space and amenities for the on-site Scania team.

Additionally, Hope Valley will be Scania Australia’s first true EV-ready facility, with infrastructure in place to handle today’s BEV charging needs and future capacity for high volume vehicle charging.

Scania said that the design of the facility – which is part of Scania’s global CI – had been undertaken with a focus on sustainability with particular attention paid to how the site will handle waste across both the warehouse and workshop facilities.

Scania dealer director for WA, SA and NT, Michael Berti, said: “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.

“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.

“Our business development trajectory requires us to ramp up our capacity to service our growing fleet of customer vehicles as well as to prepare for the transition to battery electric and alternative fuel vehicles, which will undoubtedly arrive sooner than people think.” 

He said that Scania opened a new dedicated parts distribution warehouse in the eastern Perth suburb of Welshpool only around two years ago.

But he said “such has been the growth of the Scania business in Western Australia, this facility has already surpassed all expectations, and this in part prompted us to further expand our parts capacity at the new Hope Valley site, by doubling our available warehousing space to handle today’s needs and support future developments in both ICE and BEV product ranges.”

Scania Australia MD Manfred Streit says the new addition to the Scania network of company-owned workshops and parts warehouses was 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 programs.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“We know mining customers demand and depend on predictable uptime. This is underscored by the huge cost of unplanned downtime. We have configured our service scheduling and parts supplies to take account of this.

“For on-road customers the uptime issue is no less important, and 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.”