AUTOFORUM

Nexus announces regional strategies for both North America and Africa

Sep 11, 2024 Warwick Robinson Nexus, Aftermarket, South Africa

Gael Escribe opened the Nexus press conference at Automechanika Frankfurt with a brief overview of the latest activities within Nexus 2024 plans. This year’s strategy concentrates on the growing opportunities in North America, which is responsible for a sizable portion of their revenues.

The group have decided to establish an office in Dallas, to act as a base to assist in accelerating their groups pace in North America. “Our European companies are very happy with this move, as are US manufacturers in their desire to expand into Nexus’ traditional markets and network. “ clarified Escribe

Thiery Mugnier will in fact be based in the US for the short term, to oversee the North American infrastructure and activity out of their new office in Dallas. Escribe and the board of directors have fully endorsed the move and they see this as an excellent opportunity to enhance their value proposition in the region.

Africa is not progressing at the rate that Escribe or the group is satisfied with. He attributes this to the fact that many of the group members are up against a highly competitive eastern suppliers. A new sales manager for the region is hoped to help member companies adapt to the continent’s specific challenges. Chatting to Martin Henriksen on the stand, he expanded on their strategies and seemed upbeat about opening new opportunities on the continent.

With a dedicated event in November, the aim is to convince the traditional partners to move to a more progressive approach for the region. “The decline in this region is being addressed as a matter of urgency in a group that prides itself on consistent growth in developing markets”, continued Escribe.

A similar approach will also be applied to the Latin American markets and the southeast Asian markets. It allows Nexus to focus on very specific activities to enable these regions to move closer to the growth being experienced in Europe and the UK, which has really knocked the lights out with almost 30% growth recently.

In terms of the continued transformation of the aftermarket, and looking forward, Escribe described their drive to push the group’s funding and investment arm Mobillion, forward. With the objective of increasing their focus on European startup investment and actively grow their Euro focus on innovation. Escribe expanded “We need to continue utilizing technology and include AI integration via our new partners in India, who are focused on deployment of these technologies into the aftermarket.”

Marketparts have helped distributors to identify and solve overstock and stock shortages across the group, even in the case of manufacturers. The concept is to also assist logistic teams to forecast their needs better and more accurately, instead of simply looking at historic data. According to Escribe this data focused business is unique in the aftermarket, and opens new revenues streams from business intelligence and market data monetization.

Nexus group companies number of 2500, and the individuals coming from this enormously diverse group of businesses require the best possible systems and strategies backed by the best possible training and MBA’s.

Leaders of industry and other aftermarket companies are building a 2-3 day programme labelled the “INSEAD Aftermarket executive program by Nexus”. For the first time ever this program will be segmented by age – only available to individuals over 40. The company recognises that there are younger people who have enormous value to offer in these organizations, and will be building a separate but similar programme for these individuals in the future

In terms of the group’s focus on sustainability they have appointed a Sustainability director, who will be starting her role in the group on the coming months. The first results of the working groups set up after the first “Climate Day” at their Montreal conference will also be release in the coming months with a dedicate conference on sustainability set out for the second quarter for 2025, at avenue in Emirates still to be announced. The defined ESG parameters are being driven by POC programmes, currently being rolled out across the group and the newly appointed sustainability director will actively be looking at broadening the scope of new POC’s and ensuring the constraints of the various regional compliance requirements.

We will be following up on this story with the SA Nexus team so watch this space for more South African Nexus news.