The Christchurch-based “Cog Swappers” team of Scania New Zealand technicians has finished runner-up at the global final of the Scania Top Team competition held in Sweden.

The Kiwi team comprising Pieter Meijer, Russell Dixon, Dave van Schie, Samuel Hison, Michael Long, Anthony Paddock and Timothy Broome finished second to the team representing Germany. Brazil claimed the third placing.

Since its start in 1989, the Scania Top Team competition has developed from a national training event into a global training programme with focus on practical and theoretical skills. The competition rewards the best of Scania’s 8,000 service technicians and parts experts from 70 countries.

The 2023 finalists were Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Taiwan. The 12 service teams had qualified through regional and national finals for the eleventh international Top Team World Final.

The German team won the first prize of Euro50,000 while the New Zealand team’s runner-up effort was rewarded with a Euro30,000 prize.

Scania Top Team is a global competition for professional service teams within the Scania service network, competing in teams. It begins at every team’s workshop, with theoretical challenges in two parts. The best teams advance to national finals, where theoretical exercises are supplemented with practical. 

Competition exercises require knowledge, team spirit, and discipline. The competition format follows daily work patterns, the most essential objective being to satisfy the customer’s needs.

National winners meet at the international regional finals and from there 12 teams progress to the world finals.

The competition is a way of highlighting the importance of service personnel. There is a shortage of service technicians in the world. Scania alone needs to recruit more than 1,000 service technicians annually in the coming years.