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apan-based truck maker UD Trucks has opened its first truck factory in Indonesia, hoping to benefit from the country’s growing infrastructure development in years to come.

UD Trucks, which was acquired by Swedish automobile manufacturing giant Volvo in 2007, formed partnerships with Tjahja Sakti Motor and Gaya Motor to build the factory with investment worth US$3 million.

Tjahja Sakti Motor and Gaya Motor are subsidiaries of automotive giant Astra International.

The new factory, located in North Jakarta, is expected to produce 200 units of Quester trucks per month with more than 40 percent of local industrial content (TKDN). Quester is a heavy duty truck designed specifically to cater the mining, construction and logistics sectors.

“The infrastructure development in Indonesia had been quite big recently and it’s still continuing. It brings very positive things as we need trucks to build the infrastructure and we will need good efficient trucks when you have a good infrastructure,” Volvo Group Trucks Asia and JVs Sales president Jacques Michel said after the factory’s opening on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo issued two policies to expedite hundreds of projects listed as “national strategic projects”, alongside a large-scale electrification program.

They comprised 225 projects in 13 sectors, such as railways and toll roads, and have received special backing and attention from the government.

UD Trucks, which conducts sales and services in more than 64 countries through a worldwide network of over 233 dealers, has sold around 1,400 units of Quester trucks in Indonesia since the beginning of the year. The figure already surpassed last year’s total sales of 560 trucks.

“Indonesia is a huge market for us, and we all know that it is the largest economy in ASEAN. So, the launch of this new facility is a commitment from UD Trucks to strengthen our market here,” Volvo Indonesia president director Valery Muyard said.

At present, UD Trucks controls 15 percent of market share, the second biggest in Indonesia’s heavy duty truck segment. Around 70 percent of the company’s truck sales came from construction and logistics industries in Java, while the rest came from the mining industry outside Java.

The company had recently shifted its focus from the mining sector following the downward trend in commodity prices globally. Mining accounted for 90 percent of its sales in 2015.

Coal prices plunged by 70 percent in the period of 2011 to 2015. However, a surprise change in Chinese government policy recently led the country to lower its domestic production and encouraged fuel prices to increase. Therefore, coal exports to China have also surged, boosting global coal prices eventually.

“It is already bottoming out. The coal price is going back to a positive trend and so does the customer demand,” Michel said.