INCREASING PAYLOAD
PERFORMANCE
Fabrika Automobila Priboj is a leading European manufacturer of commercial and heavy-duty vehicles. Philip Yorke spoke to Mirko Stojovic, the company’s general manager, and Nikola Grabovcic, its expert for selling abroad, about the development of buses with gas-powered engines and its move into new markets.
F
abrika Automobila Priboj (FAP) was founded in Priboj on the river Lim in Serbia in 1953 and began by manufacturing a composite range of heavy-duty vehicles. By the early 1970s, thanks to its manufacturing licence with Daimler Benz, the company achieved the production of more than 7,000 vehicles per year. However, in the 1990s, as a result of the civil war in Yugoslavia and heavy economic sanctions,
production was significantly curtailed for many years. After the war, a new investment and restructuring programme was implemented and FAP is now beginning to reclaim the ground that it lost in the commercial vehicle marketplace. FAP has three main manufacturing plants in Priboj, including a mechanical processing plant that is responsible for machining, as well as for the toothing of gears, assembly
