Mats Harborn, Executive Director of Scania China Strategic Centre in Beijing, explains that the visit is a step in Scania’s efforts to raise greater awareness in the Chinese market. “The journalists received a broad understanding of how Scania supplies vehicles and services that meet the needs of skilled transport companies and helps them to achieve sustainable profitability. We also gave them an insight into Scania’s core values and ways of working in addition to providing them with an opportunity to experience a West European trucking environment.”

During their visit to Scania, the journalists could test drive trucks at DemoCentre and later spend the night in Scania truck cabs. “It was really amazing to discover that a vehicle with an engine so powerful could be so silent,” says Senior Editor Mr Cheng at China’s oldest motor journal Auto Fan. “The cab comforts are excellent and the overview from a truck cab is something quite different from that of a passenger car.” After a night’s sleep in the cab, he feels thoroughly rested and impressed by the silence.

Upon waking, Senior Editor Mr Wang at the web site Sina was quick to share his experience with readers directly from his smartphone. “There are fundamental differences between the passenger car and heavy vehicle industries,” Mr Wang comments, while adding that there are also significant differences between Chinese and West European trucker culture.

The four-day week will be introduced in June and cover employees and managers at production, research and development units as well as administration and corporate staff units at Scania’s operations in Sweden – some 6,000 white collar employees and 6,000 workshop employees in all.

The agreement will apply for six months, with a break for holidays. Scania undertakes not to issue any lay-off notice during the period of the agreement.

The four-day week is a key element of Scania’s strategy to preserve the collective competency of the company despite a very sharp decline in market demand.

Scania has already introduced various forms of working hour reductions for more than 2,000 employees in the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere.

For further information, please contact Erik Ljungberg, Senior Vice President, Corporate Relations, tel. +46 8 553 835 57.

Scania is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks and buses for heavy transport applications, and of industrial and marine engines. A growing proportion of the company’s operations consists of products and services in the financial and service sectors, assuring Scania customers of cost-effective transport solutions and maximum uptime. Employing 35,000 people, Scania operates in about 100 countries. Research and development activities are concentrated in Sweden, while production takes place in Europe and South America, with facilities for global interchange of both components and complete vehicles. In 2008, invoiced sales totalled SEK 89 billion and net income amounted to SEK 8.9 billion. Scania press releases are available at www.scania.com