Leyland Daf opens up, makes more
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• Leyland Daf has announced record production levels at its Lancashire plant.
At the opening of the new Leyland Daf sales and marketing headquarters in Thame, Oxfordshire this week, Daf SV president Aart van der Padt revealed that the Leyland assembly plant is now producing 56 vehicles a day. That is a 22% increase on the previous figure, itself a 12% improvement on the level before April this year.
Van der Padt says that, although there are no plans for such a move at present, this production level (of around 14,000 units a year) could be increased to near 20,000 a year if required. The increased production has led to a small increase in employment at Leyland, he says.
He confirms that, with the assembly plant at Eindhoven in the Netherlands running at near capacity, future expansions in production will almost certainly have to be accommodated at the British plants. It is likely, he concedes, that some assembly of Daf-originated products will be necessary at Leyland by the end of 1988.
Van der Padt also confirmed that Freight Rover is still looking for a collaborator for the project to replace the current Sherpa. While he concedes that any collaboration will have to be agreed upon quite quickly, he says that the company is ". . . not in a time squeeze", and that the new vehicle itself is some way off: "It will not be as soon as three years," he says. He confirms that the plans are for output at Freight Rover to rise to as many as 50,000 vehicles a year.