WOLFSBURG/MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - VW's commercial vehicle holding company Traton delivered only slightly more vehicles in the fourth quarter than a year earlier. In the months from October to December, 88,700 trucks and buses were delivered to customers, as the Volkswagen Group announced in Wolfsburg on Friday. This was a year-on-year increase of 0.4 percent. For the year as a whole, the supplier with the MAN, Scania, Navistar and Volkswagen Truck & Bus brands delivered 338,200 vehicles to customers. This was 10.7 percent more than in the previous year, which was still affected by parts shortages.

In the fourth quarter, the main brands MAN (+10.6 percent) and Scania (+7.7 percent) were able to noticeably increase their sales, while deliveries in North America were slightly lower at Navistar (-5.8 percent). With its heavy-duty trucks, Scania is Traton's pearl of profitability, while MAN is the brand with the highest volume.

In South America, a new emissions standard that came into force in Brazil at the beginning of the year resulted in a significant drop compared to the same period of the previous year, in which there had been pull-forward effects. As a result, the South American brand Volkswagen Truck & Bus recorded a decline of almost one third in the final quarter./men/jha/