Damien Meredith is the Chief Operating Officer for Kia Australia.

He is a down to earth bloke that knows that his first task is to sell cars now, which will then provide the foundation for future developments.

In the full year of 2019 when the market declined by 7.8%, Kia did what no other top ten manufacturer did, it increased its sales over 2018 volumes.

It is not all wonder and light. The increase was due to a 16.5% increase in Kia’s Cerato. All their other models decreased, although the reduction was mostly better than average. Part of the decline may have been some cannibalising of existing model sales by their new Seltos small SUV that they bought onto the market in mid-October and by the end of the year it had sold over 2,000 vehicles.

Towards the end of 2020, they will bring in an even smaller SUV, the Stonic.

We caught up with Damien, in a bit of a noisy area at the Australian Open Tennis tournament for which Kia is the major sponsoring partner.