Three years is long enough, and earlier today Proton announced that it has again began exporting their cars to Egypt since last doing so in December 2015. The new shipment of 225 cars is not as big the last, comprising 320 units of the Gen 2 and Persona models, but marks a significant effort to the company’s export effort.
The ship carrying the cars will set sail to Alexandria port on 22 September and expected to arrive in Cairo on 6 October. The three-model export batch will comprise of the Saga, Exora, and an unnamed model.
According to Proton, the shipments to Egypt ceased because devaluation of the local currency meant that their products couldn’t be priced competitively. However, Proton owners in the country were still serviced by continued export of car parts and efforts by local distributor, Alpha Ezz El-Arab. Now that the economy have improved, they will now sell the new Proton cars to the seven branches and dealers in the country. The return of Proton to Egypt will also see Alpha Ezz El-Arab adopting the carmaker’s new corporate identity (CI) in three outlets. These will be the first to carry the new showroom CI outside of Malaysia.
"Proton is excited at being able to export its cars to a market where they have proven to be popular in the past. Buyers there value the safety, reliability and strong resale price of Proton cars, qualities evident in the three models set to be launched in Cairo in October,” said Dato’ Radzaif Mohamed, deputy chief executive officer of Proton.
He added that the Egyptian distributor has ordered an additional 280 units to be shipped next month with a target of 1,000 cars for the whole of 2018.
Based on a quick check, the passenger car market in Egypt for 2017 totalled just over 130,000 units.
