“Dacia has been seeing international growth, which stood at 12% at the end of March,” Jan Ptacek, general manger of Renault Commercial Roumanie said without specifying the first quarter sales volumes of Dacia.
The brand is witnessing decline in France and Germany, though it remains an important actor on those markets, and significant growth in Italy, Spain and UK. It is too early to draw a conclusion for the entire year, but one thing is clear: after an outstanding 2014, when Dacia overshoot the 500,000 unit sales mark, a 20% growth year on year, it started 2015 with growth in both Romania and abroad, Ptacek said.
If the 12% maintains until the end of the year, the Romanian brand could see sales of more than 570,000 cars assembled in Mioveni, Romania and in Tangiers and Casablanca, Morocco.
Annual sales of about 600,000 cars would bring Dacia close to the big league of automakers, but still far behind Skoda, which sold more than one million cars last year. However, Renault has been selling more than one million Logan platform-based cars worldwide every year.
The growth in Romania is even stronger than worldwide, with demand largely driven by deliveries of fleets and cars to companies.
The start of the year was very good ant the results at the end of March show a 33% growth compared with first quarter of 2014 for Dacia, Ptacek said.
A 33% growth in the first quarter means more than 6,800 cars sold on a market that had gone up 16% two months into the year. If the growth pace remains unchanged through the end of the year, Dacia will have sold 40,000 motor vehicles in Romania or more than 10% of the production of its plant, a first for the last seven years.
On the other hand, Dacia’s traditional markets like France and Germany posted 14% and 7% decline in the first quarter, while UK and Spain posted 10% and 38% growth. Dacia is already taking on Fiat in Spain and beat Skoda by 4,000 cars. In Italy, it saw 12% growth to 12,700 units, leaving Kia behind.
Nicolas Maure, managing director Dacia and Renault Romania, told ZF in an interview not long ago that a normal sales volume for Romania would be 20% of the production of the plant in Mioveni or 70,000 cars. This means the motor vehicle market in Romania should amount to more than 200,000 units a year.
Dacia relies on the new limited editions for an increase in sales. One of those editions was launched last year to celebrate the ten years since the introduction of the Logan in Romania and another, of all its models except Dokker Van, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the relaunch of the brand in Europe.
The limited edition Logan has sold more than 1,100 units since launch, in line with the company’s expectations, Ptacek said.
This year’s growth drivers should be the clunkers program (‘Rabla’), offering 25,000 vouchers instead of the 20,000 last year and the new First Car scheme, whereby the government secures half of a car loan to buy a new car that costs no more than 50,000 lei excluding VAT (about EUR13,800 VAT included). This scheme is available only to those who have never owned a new car and are not behind with payments on other bank loans.
Dacia hopes to deliver the first car to a buyer via this year’s clunkers program at the end of April and would like to see the program being as successful as it was in 2014 not just for its sales (Dacia accounted for more than 50% of the sales via the clunkers program last year) but also as a whole, Jan Ptacek said.
Dacia sold almost 10,300 cars out of 30,000 via the clunkers program in 2014, while Renault ranked third with about 1,500 cars out of 6,700.
As for the First Car scheme, it has just started and the company cannot see its impact yet. It is currently assessing customer interest in it, the executive added.
Renault Commercial Roumanie’s boss says that even though he cannot provide a precise growth figure, the trend at the start of the year was positive, the clunkers program is in progress and helping the market grow and all necessary conditions for 2015 to be a good a year for the Romanian motor vehicle market have already been met. This year should be a second year of growth in a row after six years of decline.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)