L-R: JAC Assembly Expert, Jack Huang; JAC Country Heavy-duty Sales Manager, Yu DeKun; Group Executive Director, Lanre Shittu Motors, Taiwo Shittu; Head Plant and Logistics, Lanre Shittu Motors, Ejaz Mughal and Head, HR and Admin Lanre Shittu Motors, Udoh Anietie Philip, inside the LSM auto assembly plant in Lagos…recently.
After a period of painstaking effort in ensuring it gets it right, frontline auto company, Lanre Shittu Motors (LSM), has finally unveiled a tech-driven auto assembly plant at its Amuwo-Odofin, Lagos facility on the ever busy Oshodi-Mile Expressway. The plant is expected to be formally unveiled first quarter of next year.
The smart assembly line, manned by competent Nigerian technicians and engineers as well as expatriates from China, has been conditioned to assemble JAC trucks.
Conducting auto journalists round the facility recently, the company’s Executive Director, Mr. Taiwo Shittu, accompanied by an official of JAC China, Mr. Shuan Yu, expressed confidence that the plant is the most modern in the country.
According to Shittu, some 150 units of JAC trucks have already been rolled out from the assembly line, even as the facility has the capacity to assemble more based on demand.
It has also the capacity to assemble six units of trucks in one shift or 12 in two shifts depending on market demand, and can also roll out about 150 units monthly.
Shittu said the plant has the capacity to carry out complete knocked down (CKD), adding that the trucks being rolled out from the plant are of equal quality as the ones produced from any JAC assembly plant in the world.
Revealing that LSM is equally building another plant in Ogun state, he added that “In this assembly plant, all the equipment were imported from Germany. We believe in auto policy and we believe it has come to stay. The government is really focused on the policy”.
“We believe genuinely in the JAC brand; it has come to stay; and very soon it will take over the market demand for trucks because of its quality and our experience in the automotive business in the last 38 years in Nigeria. Already, we have received orders for hundreds of units of these trucks from fleet customers, including BUA Group, and many others. On daily basis, the lists keep growing,” Shittu said.
He expressed support and strong confidence on some of the stringent measures taken by the Federal Government to streamline auto assembly processes and procedures, whereby nobody is allowed to set up an assembly plant without satisfying the full requirement of the mandatory assemblers’ bonafide certificate.
Shaun Yu, who is the Sales Manager, Medium and Heavy Truck Department of JAC, said the JAC trucks are specially designed for Nigerian roads, noting that most of them have been running for eight years, and they are still in good condition.
Yu said the partnership with LSM is a win-win, adding that the future is bright for the two firms.
In a related development, the dealership has completed and opened its ultra-modern three-S (sales, service and spares) facility in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Shittu said the company is training 40 Nigerians as a way of giving back to the society.
“Prior to the recruitment of these set of people, they are majorly unskilled people, but have passion to develop themselves. Some of them are university graduates, while others are secondary and primary school leavers,” he said.
When they are selected, they are sent out to the various training schools in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt set up by Lanre Shittu Motors.
