Martina Biene returns to her beloved “second home” as Chairperson and Managing Director for Volkswagen Group South Africa.”
December 2022
A chink of champaign glasses and fond, mid-air reminisces of respective jobs well done and friendships made is how Martina Biene remembers her flight departing South Africa in August 2020. Seated alongside the then exiting Chairperson and Managing Director of Volkswagen South Africa, Thomas Schäfer, it was with a sore heart that Biene bid farewell her adopted second home to take up a role as Head of Small and Compact Product Line in her native Germany.
Two years later, with Schäfer now the CEO of Volkswagen brand, Biene’s experience with this manufacturer’s ever-important compact class products – including the Kariega-assembled Polo hatch – is seen as crucial as she returns to South Africa as the first female Chairperson and Managing Director of VWSA.
Arriving in South Africa in 2019 on the back of 16 years’ worth of accomplishment within various Volkswagen brand portfolios, Biene would oversee a purple patch for VWSA as Head of Passenger Car Brand. During this period, the German car maker enjoyed its highest market share in thirteen years, recorded at 20.4%.
A firm favourite among the South African motoring media fraternity, Biene received a hero’s welcome at the recent international launch event of the all-new Amarok pick-up, hosted in Cape Town. Asked about the perceived challenges associated with her newest role, she noted both a continuation of the positive work completed to date in terms of expanding the brand’s presence in other African markets, as well as encouraging a narrative in South Africa around the future of mobility, including EV.
Returning to South Africa to hand over to ceremonial baton to his August 2020 travel companion, Schäfer announced; “Martina is returning to the market which she knows very well after her successful time as the Head of the Volkswagen Brand Sales and Marketing. Her mandate is to sustain VWSA’s strong position in South Africa, and to continue to pursue Volkswagen’s plans to grow the Brand in the Sub-Saharan Africa markets.”