There seems to have been a big turn of events in the world of commercial vehicles. The Mercedes-Benz Malaysia Commercial Vehicles (MBM CV) business has been acquired by Hap Seng Trucks Distribution Sdn Bhd. What this means is that everything that used to be handled by Mercedes-Benz Malaysia, via MBM CV is now handled by Hap Seng Trucks Distribution. This includes handling the import of Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicles (trucks, etc), the local assembly, the wholesale distribution and aftersales service of Mercedes-Benz and FUSO commercial vehicles in Malaysia.
Hap Seng Trucks Distribution Sdn Bhd is wholly owned subsidiary of Hap Seng Auto Sdn Bhd which is itself a company under the diversified conglomerate Hap Seng Consolidated Berhad. Hap Seng Consolidated Berhad is a public company listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad. The group is a diversified conglomerate with six core businesses - plantations, property investment and development, credit financing, automotive, fertilizers trading and building materials.
Speaking on the reason for the sale of MBM CV, Mercedes-Benz Malaysia President and CEO, Dr Claus Weidner said “The sale of our commercial vehicle business is aligned to the strategy of our parent company, Daimler AG, to strengthen the divisional structure by transforming this function into a legally independent unit. We are confident that this move will prove to be beneficial for both our passenger car and commercial vehicle business here in Malaysia. For our passenger car business, we will continue our successful strategy of putting the customer at the centre of our activities,”
What we gather from the statement above is that Mercedes-Benz Malaysia has decided put more control into a Malaysian distributor-partner to handle all of its commercial vehicle activities. They seem to be banking on the local expertise to push their products to customers rather than carrying out the efforts themselves. Maybe Mercedes-Benz Malaysia sees the potential in growth if this happens.
It could well be the case as the commercial vehicle sector plays to a different set of rules when it comes to capturing the market. In terms of the premium passenger car market, it does seem that they've got a very good system and we suppose that they've decided to try things differently when it comes to the commercial vehicle sector as whilst MBM CV was doing decently well is the smaller FUSO branded vehicles, the Mercedes-Benz branded vehicles have been facing a lot of competition from the other European brands here. So a change may have be warranted to tackle this situation.
The amount agreed upon for the sale hasn't been announced by the parties there. Another key piece of information pertaining to this piece of news is that Hap Seng Trucks Distribution Sdn Bhd will be led by Roland Schneider. He has been dealing with Daimler commercial vehicles over the past 28 years in various capacities throughout the years.
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