Toyota SA’S KwaZulu-Natal plant is now protected by SVI -armoured Hilux fleet. Picture: Supplied
Demand for armoured vehicles is soaring as it has become no longer safe to transport valuable products on the road, according to SVI Engineering’s business development director Nicol Louw.
SVI is a leading specialist manufacturer of armoured products, and this week it announced that it had armoured a fleet of Hilux double-cab bakkies which are being deployed to help protect Toyota South Africa Motors’ massive vehicle-manufacturing plant in KwaZulu-Natal.
Louw said the company was seeing strong growth year-on-year, and the vehicles they had armoured for their clients literally saved lives every week, with particular hot spots being mining companies that increasingly come under attack by bands of heavily armed illegal miners, and in KwaZulu-Natal, where he believes, from discussions with their clients, that crime had increased sharply since the civil unrest and looting in the province in 2021.
While in the past mainly cash-in-transit armoured vehicles were hijacked on the roads, currently all manner of goods-in-transit were being hijacked, including cellphones, meat trucks and even online delivery vehicles, Louw said.
“For some individuals, they are protected at home and protected in the office, but they are exposed in between,” he said.
His views of rising crime on the roads is mirrored in SA Police Service statistics, which show that in the first three months of the 2022/23 financial year the number of carjackings increased 30% to 5 866 compared with the same period in 2019, cash-in-transit crimes increased 73% to 60, while truck hijackings rose 52% to 508 – the truck hijackings in a three-month period average out at more than five a day.
SVI’s clients include mining companies, security companies, military vehicles, other companies needing protected transport and wealthy private clients. As an indication of the growth in demand, Louw said SVI had 40 employees three years ago, but this figure had jumped to nearly 90, while volumes through their factory had doubled.
The Hilux, which is produced at the Japanese firm’s Prospecton facility south of Durban, is a popular recipient of SVI’s semi-discreet B6 Stopgun V2.0 armouring kit. At Toyota South Africa Motors, the Hilux 2.4 GD-6 Raider double-cab bakkie is armoured with full ballistic protection against assault rifles, including AK47, R1 and R5.
The Prospecton plant, back in production after suffering extensive flood damage in April 2022, was also forced to close for more than a week in July 2021 due to civil unrest in the region. Though the factory did not incur any damage, the riots and looting in parts of the province meant production had to be halted, impacting both local customer deliveries and exports.
He said that while there were different levels and specifications of armouring for vehicles, armouring a luxury vehicle such as a Land Cruiser with discrete full ballistic protection could set you back just under R1 million.
The Stopgun V2.0 package provides South Africa’s security forces with a more cost-effective B6 solution to combat crime, escort valuables in transit or use for mining patrols, and it takes around four weeks to prepare and three weeks to install, with the vehicle remaining fully serviceable at the agent.
It features integrated door armour, uprated door hinges to cope with additional mass, flat armoured glass bolted into each window frame to allow for easy replacement should damage be sustained during an attack and bullet-resistant protection to the roof, front fenders, all pillars, part of the firewall, and key under-bonnet components such as the battery and ABS unit.
BUSINESS REPORT