BMW announces big investment in Rosslyn plant, says it is here to stay

They’ve been in South Africa for half a century and are not going anywhere, says the BMW Group. It was announcing a multi-billion rand investment over five years for the electrification and digitalisation of its Rosslyn plant in Pretoria.

At the German car manufacturer’s 50th anniversary celebrations in South Africa, BMW announced the R4.2-billion investment in the Rosslyn plant – its first plant outside Germany – which will produce the BMW X3 plug-in hybrid that will be exported to the rest of the world.

The investment is in line with BMW’s iFACTORY master plan for future production and marks another step in advancing the development of efficient, digitalised, resource-friendly production.

The first hybrid X3 is set to roll off the plant towards the second half of next year.

BMW’s Rosslyn plant is a mainstay of its global production network. 

To mark its silver jubilee, Dr Milan Nedeljković, BMW AG board member for global production and chairman of the board of management for BMW South Africa, announced that the investment – worth more than €200-million – would be accompanied by specialist training for more than 300 of the plant’s employees.

“Fifty years ago, we took over a small assembly line (in Pretoria). It was a huge step for our company’s production... We’ve (since) manufactured more than 1.6 million vehicles here in South Africa, which we export into more than 40 markets – 14 of which are in Africa. The major step in our production was the 3 Series, which we manufactured for 35 years here in South Africa.”

BMW sells vehicles in more than 140 countries around the world and operates manufacturing facilities in 15.

The X3 was first manufactured in 2018: It is BMW’s most important volume model. It produces about 76,000 X3s a year, with more than 300,000 produced in SA to date.

The group is investing in different technologies: in the body shop, it will be adopting new stations and additional geometric fixtures for the new model. With the plug-in hybrid, it will be electrifying the assembly and a high-voltage battery. It will be adding a drive train, adding a marriage station where the drive train can be fixed to the main body, and making structural changes for logistics and different supply stations.

Peter van Binsbergen, BMW SA CEO, said they were working closely with their supplier network and partners to transform and, at the same time, to electrify. This is an ongoing process.

“As the car park grows, so does the need to grow your charging infrastructure, your training and so on. But we are obviously spending a lot of focus on training our dealer staff, our production staff to get ready for the high-voltage introduction… because that’s actually the first step that our current plant doesn’t have yet.

“You need to obviously be qualified in how to work with high voltage when it comes to building and servicing the car.”

Van Binsbergen said BMW had some exciting hybrids coming this year, which the X3 hybrid will be docking on to next year.

“It’s part of our strategy. BMW believes in the power of choice, so petrol, diesel, hybrid, EV – you can get it all in South Africa.”

Rosslyn was the first plant in the BMW Group to use biogas in its energy management. Introduced in 2015, it currently delivers up to a third of the plant’s power supply.

“We have already launched a project to increase the use of biogas for the future… and developed unique methods to recycle the plant’s waste. We have upscaled styrofoam waste to lightweight bricks, which was enough to build more than 650 affordable houses to date.”

BMW also announced a R30-million donation to a Unicef programme focusing on children’s science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education. 

Last year, the BMW Group opened its global IT hub at the plant. It now employs about 2,000 staff who provide IT services for the group worldwide. 

On South Africa’s litany of problems, Van Binsbergen said over the past 50 years, “it hasn’t been plain sailing”.

“We’ve had the oil crisis, the banking crisis, Covid and more, and we’ve gone through those difficulties. So the short-term negative aspects, we’ll get through them as well.”

He said the group had been here for a long time and had no plans to leave. DM