Volkswagen’s top executive in South Africa said uncertainty about power supply is limiting the German car maker’s ability to expand in the country.

While there’s been a two-month hiatus in the power cuts that have plagued South Africa since 2008, no long-term solution has been presented to car manufacturers despite a tour of plants by electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Volkswagen’s local head said.

“The overall power situation brings South Africa to an uncompetitive situation in the automotive industry,” Martina Biene, chairwoman and MD of Volkswagen South Africa, said in an interview in Gqeberha, close to VW’s factory. “Isuzu and ourselves and the Ford engine plant, we are affected by load shedding,” she said.

The uncertainty over electricity supply, caused by the poor maintenance of the state power utility’s coal-fired plants, increases the cost of running the facility compared with VW’s more than 100 sites across the world, making it hard to argue for additional investment, she said.

“My biggest opposition is 113 other VW plants,” she said.

While Biene welcomed the current lull in outages, she said the 165 000-car-per-year plant in Kariega, in the Eastern Cape, had already spent R130-million on generators. The factory, which will soon become the company’s sole producer globally of Polo hatchbacks, needs 14MW of power to run.

‘No outcome’

The visit by the minister had yielded no results despite a discussion on a number of potential solutions, she said. Calls to the minister’s spokespeople and e-mails to his office weren’t answered.