UD Trucks and Tan Chong Industrial Equipment Sdn Bhd roll out the first-ever locally-assembled or complete knocked-down (CKD) medium-duty UD Croner truck from Segambut-based Tan Chong Motor Assemblies Sdn Bhd (TCMA) making Malaysia the first market in the world to assemble the CKD Croner and rolling it out successfully for UD Trucks.
It follows two years after the successful rollout of the first locally-assembled heavy-duty UD Quester truck in 2016. As such, this is also the first UD Croner truck that is locally assembled for UD Trucks in Asia Pacific outside of Japan with a private distributor partner. The rollout of UD Croner from local assembly comes less than a year after the medium-duty truck was launched and unveiled in Malaysia in August last year.
Filip Van den Heede, Managing Director Hub Malaysia, UD Trucks says, “UD Croner is a versatile, reliable, safe and fuel-efficient medium-duty truck range that is developed with the Asian customers in mind. It is a truck range designed to deliver extra productivity and superior uptime as it combined the best of three worlds, which are UD Trucks’ Japanese heritage and craftsmanship, Volvo Group’s proven technologies and TCIE’s local resourcing, expertise and market reach.”
Tan Keng Meng, Executive Director, Tan Chong Industrial Equipment Sdn Bhd says, “Our capability in producing complete knocked-down UD Croner trucks from our factory has further cemented Tan Chong Group’s competency in offering full range of services for the truck industry, with assembling being a highly key and strategic expertise, ever since we successfully lined-off the heavy-duty UD Quester in 2016. Our locally-assembled UD Croner trucks will not only continue to represent the hallmarks of what UD Trucks stands for, but it will also give operators all that is needed to work efficiently and effectively at an affordable price range.”
For this CKD Croner, TCIE will be rolling out 150 units this year comprising manual and auto transmission options for two models, namely Croner PKE and Croner LKE. Croner PKE caters for medium-heavy duty usage with a powerful 6-cylinder engine for regional and long haul, while Croner LKE is a multi-purpose model for in-city and city-to-city distribution focusing on transport efficiency.
According to Tan, the setting up of the assembly line with the investment of over RM1.5 million to produce locally-assembled heavy-duty UD Quester trucks two years ago was a strategic step on Tan Chong Group’s part to meet local market needs. It will also support the growth of Malaysia as an important complete knocked-down automotive market in the region. A further investment of RM4.5 million was recently made to expand the production capacity of TCMA to include CKD Croner, where part of the investment is used for expansion of assembly facilities including body and paint.
UD Trucks, on the other hand, contributed to enhancing the capabilities of local engineers by sharing technology know-how and hands-on approach in training, to enable efficient management of the expanded facility and to ensure a smooth roll-out of the locally-assembled UD Croner.
