Ford South Africa is investing R600 million into its Struandale engine plant in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) to build the new 3.0-litre V6 engine for the next-gen Ranger.
The manufacturer also confirmed that the V6 engine will be available in vehicles in South Africa.
The investment comes right after the Struandale plant reached the 3.8-million-engines-produced mark, said Ford.
V6 production
The investment in the Struandale plant will enable the plant to run a “flexible format”, whereby it produces three turbo-diesel engines.
“There are 40 stations on the line that will be common to both engines, with a further 25 stations unique to the 3.0l V6,” said Ford South Africa.
“The plant will have an annual installed capacity of 21,000 units of the 3.0l V6 turbodiesel engine when production commences in the middle of next year.”
In total, the line will be able to produce 130,000 engines per year.
The upgrades to the plant include the latest tooling, along with advanced camera and transponder systems that integrate into Ford’s global quality management system.
“This allows us to record and validate every step of the assembly operations to capture the entire birth history of each engine,” said the company.
The Struandale plant will also produce the cylinder heads for the V6 engine, of which an annual installed capacity of 42,000 units is forecast.
2.0-litre upgrades
Alongside the V6 upgrades, Ford is modernizing its current assembly line for the 2.0-litre, single-turbo and bi-turbo diesel engines.
“The updates being introduced on this assembly line will facilitate greater complexity with additional derivatives of the 2.0-litre diesel engines being introduced, increasing the current nine derivatives to 13 when production commences for the next-gen Ranger in 2022.”
To further increase output, the company is upping its usual two-shift workdays to 2.5 shifts, thereby pushing daily output from 320 up to an estimated 445 engines per day.
“While the number of people employed at the Struandale Engine Plant remains unchanged at approximately 850, the employees allocated to the various machining and assembly lines will be optimized to support the required production volumes for all three engine programmes,” said Ford South Africa.
3.8-million engines
The substantial investment in the Ford Struandale plant follows it reaching the 3.8-million-engines-produced mark.
“To date, the Struandale Engine Plant has produced more than 3.81-million engines, comprising 10 different engine programs, since opening its doors in 1964,” said Shawn Govender, plant manager at the Ford Struandale plant.
Since 2011, the engine plant has produced 792,000 “Duratorq TDCi” engines.
Since 2019, it has produced 175,000 units combined of the 2.0-litre single and bi-turbo engines.
“All these engines are supplied to the Silverton Assembly Plant in Pretoria for the Ranger and Everest, with around two-thirds of the locally-produced Rangers destined for export markets.”
The Struandale plant is also responsible for producing certain engine parts, reaching the 2.3-millionth-machined-component-sets milestone in December.
“Approximately 1.4 million component sets, or 4.2 million individual components, have been exported,” said Ford.
Ford Struandale Plant
Keyword: Ford invests R600 million to build V6 engine in South Africa – Photos