Daf looks past 1 /4m
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EARLIER this month Daf celebrated the assembly number 250,000 at its Eindhoven plant in Holland. of vehicle Daf began as a small assembly company in 1949, buying-in virtually all the components it used. Now the company has an annual turnover of around £311m and manufactures most major components including cab, engines and axles in-house.
Last year the company lost around £6m, but president Aart van der Padt is confident of a return to profitability this year.
The latest development at Eindhoven is a new final assembly line which has increased the plant's capacity from 65 to 80 vehicles a day.
The new line, which Daf says cost E750,000 to install, is longer than the one it replaces and designed to cater for new models being developed.
A new cab is being developed jointly with Enasa, which now owns Seddon Atkinson.
Daf has already announced that it will be spending £88m over the next six years on product development and a further £44m on modernising
production facilities (CM December 13, 1983 and January 28, 1984).
Daf's current heavy vehicle cab and 11.6-litre engine are derived from products which first went into production in 1969.