Mercedes-Benz’s South Africa plant rolls out its millionth car

In South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the one millionth passenger car has rolled of the assembly line in the Mercedes-Benz East London plant – a white C-Class Sedan in right-hand drive.

The new C‑Class is being produced in East London since May 2014. It is already the fourth generation of the highest-volume Mercedes-Benz model rolling of the assembly line at this production site. The plant is part of the global production network for the C-Class, which includes the lead plant in Bremen, Germany as well as the production site in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the USA and the Chinese production site at BBAC in Beijing.

Markus Schäfer, member of the Divisional Board Mercedes-Benz Cars, Production and Supply Chain Management: “South Africa is an important location in our global C-Class production network. One million passenger cars made at the Mercedes‑Benz East London plant illustrate the remarkable development this location has seen over the years.” Schäfer also praised the plant's team members for their performance and their continuous focus on efficiency, flexibility, and top-notch quality: “With their knowledge and their dedication, the entire team of the East London plant is making an important contribution to the global success of our highest-volume model series.” The Mercedes-Benz East London plant has been recognised six times by J.D. Power for manufacturing excellence, one of those six years with a Platinum Award for manufacturing quality.

Arno van der Merwe, Mercedes-Benz South Africa CEO and Executive Director Manufacturing, said: “The Mercedes‑Benz East London plant’s development has always seen enormous progress in terms of production technology, and especially the C-Class has provided important momentum in its earlier generations already. And with the start of the new C-Class in 2014, numerous cutting-edge technologies have once again been implemented in our plant for the first time.”

With regard to the training and qualification programmes on site as well as at the C-Class Centre of Competence at the Mercedes‑BenzBremen plant, Germany, van der Merwe explained: “In parallel, we have significantly invested into the qualification of our staff – especially for the new technologies – and thus optimally prepared the team for the start of production in May 2014 with more than 1,400 training interventions in preparation.”