UD Trucks Corporation, a fully owned company of the Swedish Group Volvo, has teamed up with Volvo Group Middle East (VGME) to expand its parts distribution and after-sales operations across the region.

VGME, a subsidiary of Volvo Parts Corporation, a leading provider of transport solutions, will provide facilities for a regional parts distribution centre, a regional competence development centre and a regional UD Trucks Middle East office, all at Jebel Ali Free Zone.

UD Trucks plans to reach out to seven countries from its new base: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan and Lebanon.

It is designed to provide the best solutions in products and services to the markets and reinforce UD Trucks’ supply lines across the Middle East, a statement said.

“Our strengthened presence in the Middle East will deliver measurable benefits to customers including, improved order-to-delivery lead times, improved parts availability and better back-order recovery, all of which translates into enhanced customer support,” said Claes Svedberg, senior vice president, UD Trucks.

“At UD Trucks we believe that getting closer to the customer will allow us to be even more professional, passionate and dependable as a service provider.”

The partnership opens the door for UD Trucks to keep a regular stock of some 6800 service parts and an inventory valued at Dh8 million ($2.17 million) in the Middle East, drastically reducing supply lead time and delivering quick repairs for customers, the statement said.

The new regional competence development centre will also provide after-sales training for downstream stakeholders.

Gen Yoshida, general manager-product management, UD Trucks, said: “We target 90 per cent of parts availability from the Regional Parts Distribution Center in order to shorten delivery lead time to our partners from 1-2 months to 5-8 days.”

“Moreover, our partners will be able to enjoy communication as well as training facilities in local language, local time, local calendar, and local ways of working. This is part of our strategy to reach out to our clients in a manner that suits them best,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service