busnews.com.au July 2019 ABC^39and storage process. We have reinforced
our bodybuilder partnerships. There is
obviously still more to do, but we want
to claim back what belonged to us in
the first place.
Keep your ears open, Fabian, we have
a couple of surprises up our sleeves.ABC: What do we as an industry
need to do to improve, if at all?
Where do we need to be? How
are we going?MK: I believe the right adjective
describing the Australian bus industry
is idiosyncratic. A proud and strong
tradition, a shifting business landscape
from small family owned businessestowards consolidation, unique ADRs,
a local bodybuilding industry creating
jobs and increasingly prominent foreign
bodybuilders. All this in a very crowded
and relatively small bus market. Look, I
don’t believe I am in a position to have
strong opinion whether the industry
needs a change and, if at all, in which
direction after only 10 months being
in Australia.
The million-dollar question is
how to set up the ideal ecosystem,
where tax payers get the value for
what they pay for, local jobs are
protected and operators still make
a decent margin. That is easier said
than done.
Having said that, the two issues
I really see as being problematic
are the emission standards and
the vehicle replacement cycles.
For the former, we all talk about
hybrid and electric buses but we
are still supplying Euro 5 vehicles to
the market. And for the latter, we are
trying to keep exactly the same buses
25 years on the road. Imagine, a Euro
5 bus you deliver in Victoria today will
be running along with electric and
autonomous buses in 2040 on the
same roads, or will it?
Let me ask you another question.
In which scenario, would you be
comfortable: putting your children
on a 1997-model year school bus or
a brand new OC500RF with all the
safety systems on-board? I know these
are policy questions and have various
implications, but coming from overseas
to a first-world country I found this to be
the wrong policy.ABC: Does New Zealand also fall
under your responsibilities in
the Australasian region? What
different challenges lay there than
in Australia, if there are any?MK: Yes, as Mercedes-Benz Truck
and Bus Australia Pacific we are also
responsible for the New ZealandWe want to
claim back what
belonged to us in
the first place.After I started, we had a fresh look at
this strategy and fine-tuned it together.
My personal contribution was more
about the international expertise I
bring from the markets where we
do extremely well and make the
competition irrelevant.
We have now a clear business plan
of how our team structure should look
like; how we should be meeting and
exceeding the expectations of the
councils, metro and regional operators
in Australia and New Zealand. We
listened to our customers and have
streamlined our product portfolio. We
overhauled our marketing plan. We
left no stone unturned to have a more
efficient stock management, logistics