Car dealers HWP Group are set to improve their spare parts department, after acknowledging publicly yesterday it was not up to scratch.

President Jonathan Brewin announced the project which would see capital and personnel investment into the division.

Mr. Brewin said the programme reflected the company's commitment to improving the performance of a "challenging spare parts situation''.

He said the company was midway through the "large reinvestment'' which should spark better parts availability by autumn this year.

"Many of our customers may be wondering if we are actively addressing the parts issue. We want to acknowledge to the public that we have not been doing a good job lately,'' he admitted yesterday.

"However, we are now far enough into our project to begin to reassure our customers that we will be providing increased parts availability as well as additional benefits to them.

"HWP recognises that we need to improve our spare parts situation. We are undertaking a steady and deliberate plan to improve our service.

"This is a complex project and we are working a balance between making improvements as quickly as possible whilst at the same time ensuring that we do the job properly.'' He said improving spare parts availability and the quality of service was the company's "number one priority''.

"This project involves the counting, relocation and reorganising of in excess of 100,000 items.

"It is a huge project that will take nine months from start to finish. It is critical to our company that we execute the warehouse centralisation carefully.'' "Our goal at HWP Group is to become the best parts and service operation in Bermuda. We expect to offer a level of service on par with parts operations in North America or Europe.

"We recognise that we are not at the required level of service yet but we want to communicate to customers that we are committed to aggressively improving our parts service levels.'' He said to improve service given to customers the company would upgrade the physical facilities and reorganise the department so it was based on customer needs.

All automotive parts would be centralised to one location in St. John's Road late this year which should simplify inventory control and enable faster, better service.

Centralised customer telephone administrators would also be created to allow customer service personnel to focus on their jobs.

And a dedicated special part order team would be set up to handle parts that are not in stock.

He said extra money was also to be injected into training staff.