Birmingham vanmaker LDV is reaping the rewards of its £500 million investment in a new range of vehicles after seeing sales rise by 33 per cent in July.

The privately-owned company said it sold a total of 892 vehicles last month to take a six per cent share of the British light commercial market.

LDV has been gradually gearing up production of its new Maxus range of vans, introduced at the start of the year, to about 200 a week.

Sales and marketing director Tony Lewis said: "These results demonstrate a good start for the first half of the year for LDV, and it's encouraging to see the Maxus is doing well in the market since its launch in January.

"However, it is a competitive market place, and we remain focused on our sales objectives for the remainder of 2005."

The Birmingham vanmaker has already won some significant fleet orders for Maxus - which it claims is the most driver-friendly van every made - and boosted its management team recently by recruiting Keith Stanton, former plant director at Ford's Transit factory in Southampton to head up purchasing operations at Drew's Lane.