The future of Nissan South Africa’s Rosslyn plant near Pretoria has been the subject of speculation recently.
This follows the announcement back in August that the NP200 compact bakkie would be discontinued in March 2024, following an extended life cycle of 16 years (read our original story here).
Given that no direct replacement has been confirmed for the half-tonne bakkie, this would result in substantially reduced production volumes at the Gauteng plant as around 1,000 NP200s are produced there each month.
Unfortunately, Nissan South Africa has confirmed that it has entered into a formal consultation phase to restructure the business, which is likely to result in employee layoffs.
Interestingly, Nissan SA also confirmed that an “immediate” replacement for the NP200 was going to be built “on an Alliance shared platform” in Russia, but these plans were shelved after the Russia-Ukraine conflict apparently made the model unviable.
Nissan pulled out of the Russian market in October 2022, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year, and its assets were sold off to a local partner called NAMI.
Second model for Rosslyn production?
For now Nissan South Africa says it continues to produce the Navara bakkie at the local plant, and is planning model upgrades as well as an increase in exports.
However it’s unlikely that this could come close to plugging the production gap left by the NP200, even if the company did manage to improve on the current sales performance.
In the past quarter Nissan has sold an average of just 381 Navaras per month in South Africa, with exports averaging a further 346 monthly units.
Nissan South Africa said it was aiming to secure a second model for production at the Rosslyn facility:
“In line with our African strategy, securing a second model for production in South Africa is a priority and a study into an alternative vehicle is already progressing,” the carmaker said.
“Until our future plans are confirmed, the business will be operating at reduced production volumes and needs to act responsibly to maintain its long-term competitiveness and be ready to secure future opportunities.”
Nissan SA did not state which vehicles were under study for local production. But given the growth of the SUV market in recent years it would not be surprising if a compact crossover of sorts was being studied.
Or perhaps a double cab half-tonner?
Nissan confirmed earlier this year that it was developing a new half-tonne bakkie in conjunction with Renault for the Argentinian market (full story here). This leads us to believe that it will be a derivative of the next-generation Renault Oroch.
The current Oroch is based on the first-generation Renault Duster, and it’s likely that the next version will be based on a newer version of that SUV.
Although it’s unclear just how viable such a project would be for the South African operation, surely teaming up with Renault to produce both body styles on local shores could make sense on some level?
This is all speculation, of course, but we do hope that the local manufacturer manages to secure another production contract for Rosslyn sooner rather than later.