Perodua Working On Optimising Operations To Meet Demand

Throughout 2022, Perodua had been working on optimising its operations especially in its production system to meet the backlogged demand. Last year came with many challenges, including the ecosystem’s recovery from the massive flood, shortage of workers due to spikes in COVID-19 cases at the supplier level, shortage of semiconductor supply and the ever increasing cost of raw materials. These factors had affected its business as it contended with meeting local pent-up demand through the pandemic period. According to Perodua, it and its partners were able to overcome these challenges and find much needed growth for the industry. Through shared responsibility, the Malaysian automotive industry was able to maximise its potential in meeting customers’ expectations last year, which also led to Perodua achieving its best performance on record thus far.

“These achievements were also the local ecosystem’s shared commitment towards our customers and our collective roles in advancing this industry,” Perodua President and Chief Executive Officer, Dato’ Sri Zainal Abidin Ahmad said.

Perodua’s production rate rose by 49.5% to 289,054 vehicles in 2022 compared with 193,400 vehicles the year before. Concurrently, its sales also increased at a similar rate i.e. 48.2% to 282,019 vehicles (vs 190,291 vehicles registered in 2021). Additionally, its aftersales division saw intakes grow to 2.6 million, a 30% increase from the 2.0 million service intakes in 2021.

“The industry did a lot soul searching and from the learning points obtained during the pandemic and we realised that we needed to take active steps to recover in 2021 – which saw its fair share of challenges and from there to maximise the ecosystem’s potential in 2022,” Dato’ Sri Zainal said.

“Our goal was to meet customers’ expectations of us– not just in terms of delivery of products and services but also in introducing greater value offerings to all Malaysians,” Dato’ Sri Zainal said. As a result, 2022 proved to be the best year so far for the Malaysian automotive industry in general, and Perodua in particular. “This can be seen with our December 2022 production and sales performance, which averaged 1,000 vehicles made and registered per day”.

For 2023, Perodua and its partners will focus on leveraging on the growth achieved so far and expand capacity. “For this to come true, we hope material prices and fuel prices remain manageable; at the same time, we also hope that foreign exchange and interest rates would be favourable to industry growth,” said Dato’ Sri Zainal.

Managing costs will be a priority as it will help the company to maintain its vehicle retail prices. Another urgent priority is the delivery of vehicles to buyers by the 31 March 2023 deadline, the last day of the government’s sales tax exemption on new cars.

Moving forward, Perodua will continue to introduce new technologies in its future products and services as well as to continue to invest in innovations in its operations. “In addition, we will also encourage our partners, namely our suppliers and dealers to continue to invest in new technologies so that they can be more competitive and productive,” he explained. “I wish to take this opportunity to thank the government for their continued support, our partners for their dedication, Perodua staff for their sacrifice and hard work, and especially to our valued customers for their loyal support”. Perodua will announce its targets and goals for 2023 later this month.