Source: business.financialpost.com --- Monday, October 02, 2017
SYDNEY, Australia — After looming for four years, “Carmageddon” has hit the Australian auto industry. Toyota closed its factory in Melbourne on Tuesday, ending 54 years of production by the Japanese firm in Australia, the first country outside of Japan where the company made cars. Iconic local brand Holden plans to shutter its factory in Adelaide on Oct. 20, ending car manufacturing in Australia. Ford Motor Co., which pioneered Australian-based auto making in 1925, heralded its end in 2013 by announcing it would close its last two Australian manufacturing plants in 2016. General Motors-owned Holden followed suit several months later by announcing it, too, would close down. With the loss of those two firms making the supply of locally-produced auto components unsustainable, Toyota reluctantly soon followed. Toyota Motor Corp. has been Australia’s biggest auto manufacturer for the past decade, with 70 per cent of its cars exported, mostly to the Middle East. Output at the Melbourne plant peaked in 2007, when it made 149,000 cars. When the final Camry sedan rolled off the Melbourne production line, 2,700 Toyota workers became unemployed. “It’s sunk in now. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Michael Spiteri, who worked at the plant for 23 years, told Fairfax media. The closure of the Holden plant will eliminate another 3,000 jobs. Industry analysts forecast the loss of thousands more jobs in auto-related industries. Research by the Univer ...
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