Record demand and strong ongoing orders for new Volvo trucks in New Zealand and Australia have prompted Volvo Group Australia to increase the capacity of its Brisbane factory.

VGA says that the increased build numbers will help ease the pressure on the plant and ensure its future capability to meet customer's needs.

Volvo Trucks NZ says continuing demand here has been a large part of the decision to increase build capacity. It adds that every time supply was increased in 2017, demand quickly outstripped it.

Record NZ deliveries in 2017 and orders into 2018 remain at alltime high levels across the Volvo FM, FMX and FH model ranges, says vice president of Volvo Truck sales Australia, Mitch Peden: "At a factory level, we're doing a lot of work to ensure every available build slot is allocated to the NZ team because we know they have orders waiting.

"Further to this, we're working hard to do a better job of prioritising our build slots to have them allocated to customers, in line with their particular timing demands.

"We have juggled our build plan to maximise our ability to get additional trucks to NZ and while there's possibly not as many as we would like in the first half of 2018, if the market continues to grow, we'll continue to focus on satisfying as many requests as possible"

Demand for Volvo trucks is also at very high levels in Western Europe and other key Volvo markets worldwide and that has placed additional pressure on all of the supply chain, Peden adds.

Clive Jones, MTD Trucks' NZ national sales manager for Volvo trucks says: "The total heavy truck market in NZ is well up on last year, but our market share indicates significantly higher growth than our premium segment competitors.

"To some extent we forecast that demand but the level of growth has remained exceptionally strong and that continues to be the case. It's always difficult to let sales go when we're unable to deliver and we've certainly faced that situation a few times this year.

"On the upside though, we're grateful to the significant number of our customers who are pre-planning and making orders in advance, as well as the large number of new fleets who have joined the brand this year despite some long lead times.

"We've seen the growth right across the range. However, our high horsepower offering has seen the strongest increase, with 700 horsepower and 750hp models leading the charge as more and more high productivity vehicles enter the national fleet. Trip times, fuel efficiency, driver comfort and safety have all contributed to the demand."