Daimler Buses, a Germany-based maker of commercial vehicles, has increased its share in the key Brazilian bus market in the first half of 2015, a period in which it also put in place an assembly plant in Colombia, a company spokeswoman said.
The Mercedes Benz buses are present in the main Bus Rapid Transport systems in Latin America, including Sao Paulo and Curitiba in Brazil as well as Bogota in Colombia, according to information received by telephone from Simonette Illi, a company spokeswoman.
In a continuously challenging market environment, Daimler Buses has increased its share of the Brazilian market in the first half of the year to 52.9 percent compared with 45.6 percent in the previous year, according to company information.
Brazil is one of the most important markets for the commercial vehicle business of Daimler, according to Illi.
In another development during the first half of the year, the company finished the installation of an assembly plant in Funza, Colombia, with capacity to assemble 4,000 vehicles every year, all with parts coming from the company facilities in Brazil, she added.
The production facilities in South America include three plants in Brazil in addition to one in Argentina and one in Colombia.
In North America the company has two plants in Mexico and seven in the United States, all part of Daimler Trucks North America.
The company has received a recent large order for urban buses from Brazil´s third-largest city, Salvador da Bahia, which ordered 180 bus chassis units from the Daimler subsidiary Mercedes-Benz do Brasil.
Daimler Buses received another large order from the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, for 40 new Mercedes-Benz articulated bus chassis units, which have been delivered. Daimler has also seen another large order in Peru as Movil Tours has ordered 30 new buses.
¨In recent years, Daimler has sold an average of around 700 units per year in Peru, where it leads the local bus market with a share of over 25 percent,¨ according to a company statement.
The production network in Latin America is controlled by the Daimler subsidiary Mercedes-Benz do Brasil. In addition to three production sites in Brazil, the integrated production network also includes the Argentine plant in Buenos Aires and the Colombian plant in Funza, near Bogota.
¨With a total of five production sites, Daimler is thus the largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in Latin America,¨ the company said in a recent statement.
Daimler is seeking to continue to meet the growing demand coming for efficient Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) mobility programs in the region's main cities. BRT involves the use of routes dedicated to public transport.
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