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Ford’s Aussie plants close

Posted on 02 October, 2016

Ford’s last two remaining Australian plants will stop production at the end of this week, 91 years after Australians first began to assemble Model Ts. The plants in Geelong and Broadmeadows, both in Victoria, will close on Friday, after more than 20 years of declining sales of Australian-built Ford vehicles, reports GoAuto.com.au. Ford was once Australia’s number-one auto manufacturer, with more than 14,000 staff producing up to 150,000 vehicles a year from multiple factories in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Lately, 800 staff have been making just 80 Falcons and Territories a day for the Australian and New Zealand markets. The closure will mean the end of the popular Ford Falcon, which has been a fixture on Australian and New Zealand roads for 56 years. Ford’s presence in Australia will continue, however, through Ford Asia-Pacific’s vehicle development operation, where designers and engineers work on global car programmes. The operation employs about 1500 people, with a further 60 from the manufacturing plants transferring to support roles, joining 100 who have already made the transition, GoAuto.com.au says. About 660 manufacturing employees will get redundancy packages when the plants finish production this week, while about 80 will stay on until June next year to help the company transition from local manufacturing to importer. But Ford is pleased its NZ$10.5 million investment in government job-creation schemes has borne nearly twice as many jobs as expected in the Geelong and Broadmeadows areas. The training and support has helped the production workers to become everything from hospital maintenance workers to police protective services officers. The decline of Ford Australia’s manufacturing fortunes can be traced to the early 1990s when a perfect storm of reduced import tariff protection, recession, industrial unrest, Ford Motor Company indifference to the prospects of Falcon exports, and stiff competition from resurgent rivals Holden and Toyota triggered a stumble. Ford’s workforce was cut from 14,550 to 9600 almost overnight. While the end of Ford manufacturing in Australia is sad, the company took heart in the fact it sold more than 30,000 Australian-developed, Thai-built Ranger utes and Everest SUVs in 2015. The closure of the Ford plants marks the beginning of the end for the Australian mass-production car industry. With Ford gone, just GM Holden and Toyota Australia will be left to carry on for another year, before they too close.