Press conference of the AALM management revealed a programme innovation

On Wednesday, 21 September 2011, this year’s second press conference was held in the showroom of our company. The representatives of the company, Tomáš Jiřička, Proxy Head and top manager of AALM, Radim Paiger, Sales Manager for Europe and Turkey and Michal Bačkovský, Marketing and After Sales Service Manager, provided a current outlook for 2011, the company’s medium-term plan as well as an innovation of the manufacturing programme - a joint project of the production of buses with Avia chassis in cooperation with the supplier of bus bodies based in Volgograd.

This type of a bus of a length of 9 metres and a capacity of 36 passengers will be produced with Avia chassis. This model intended for the Russian market was presented at the exhibition COMTRANS in Moscow in September. A bus designed for the European market will differ from the Russian model in terms of quality and appearance, and its world premiere is scheduled for 21 October at the trade fair Busworld in Kortrijk, Belgium. This bus will be assembled in Letňany and sold on the European market under the brand Avia.

This year's sales should grow by 44 per cent to 650 trucks. Thanks to increasing exports to new markets, Avia gradually managed to achieve the sales figures of 2007, before the financial crisis. Moreover, Avia trucks reach entirely new markets – e.g. the markets of South America, the Middle East, Turkey or Western European countries (France, Germany, the Benelux countries), where these trucks have not so far been available.

Tomáš Jiřička specified the plans regarding the merge of the product portfolios of Avia and Ashok Leyland: “Our cooperation reflects a new trend in the automotive industry, started by the last global recession. The pressure to reduce both manufacturing and operating costs of vehicles is ever increasing. The only way to face this pressure on a global scale is to join the Western technologies with the production and sales capacity of the growing markets in Asia and South America. The cooperation will thus result in the offer of quality vehicles which will also be affordable and highly cost-effective for customers worldwide.”