Holden to make "important announcement" about its VIC and SA operations

[Resurrection]

Originally Posted by BroadyFord

Here is the statement from Mike Devereux - makes for some depressing reading:

http://media.gm.com/media/au/en/hold...structure.html

335 cars per day is just over 70K for the year. And that is Commodore and Cruze production combined. Yuk.

[russellw]

Sad for all involved from the employees on upwards. That the Australian business model for automotive production continued to be predicated on the large car sector (and derivatives) even when that segment was clearly in decline only shows how badly their manufacturing capabilities were locked into that market.

While FoA came from a lower base in production numbers (at least in recent years), the success of the Territory helped mask some of the pain and breathed life into a platform that would otherwise have died some years ago.

Where to from here is the question although I suspect the answer won't be one we will want to hear.

Cheers
Russ

[flooded one]

bad news indeed

[bobthebilda]

Originally Posted by Resurrection

335 cars per day is just over 70K for the year. And that is Commodore and Cruze production combined. Yuk.

With a few down days to add onto that. If they are making 400 cars a day now (and I assume will stay like that until redundancies happen in August), then they are pumping out around 8,000 cars per month. Doesnt quite match the current sales of 1600 commodores, 2300 cruzes, and a very over estimated 1000 exports per month = circa 5000. Even 335 x 20 days = 6700. Its gonna require VF to jump to circa 3500 cars per month to do that (and if cruze pricing is causing Holden alot of pain, like Deveraux says, then it may require VF to sell over 4000 per month).

[R-Design]

VF won't change anything, saw one the other day you'd hardly notice it if you weren't looking. Back looks like a Camry, good move guys!

[bigwil]

Originally Posted by R-Design

VF won't change anything, saw one the other day you'd hardly notice it if you weren't looking. Back looks like a Camry, good move guys!

Me too, i saw a VF ute, not much of a change.Prefer the VE

[Resurrection]

Originally Posted by bobthebilda

With a few down days to add onto that. If they are making 400 cars a day now (and I assume will stay like that until redundancies happen in August), then they are pumping out around 8,000 cars per month. Doesnt quite match the current sales of 1600 commodores, 2300 cruzes, and a very over estimated 1000 exports per month = circa 5000. Even 335 x 20 days = 6700. Its gonna require VF to jump to circa 3500 cars per month to do that (and if cruze pricing is causing Holden alot of pain, like Deveraux says, then it may require VF to sell over 4000 per month).

10 years ago Holden was asking suppliers to quote on annual volume of 160K.........

[BENT_8]

400 production workers from Elizabeth, how many more in supply roles...

Not good for an already struggling area.

[Resurrection]

Originally Posted by BENT_8

400 production workers from Elizabeth, how many more in supply roles...

Not good for an already struggling area.

When Mitsubishi closed Holden picked up some of these people. Now where in Adelaide will 400 ex-Holden people go to find alternative employment?

[bobthebilda]

Originally Posted by Resurrection

10 years ago Holden was asking suppliers to quote on annual volume of 160K.........

Yes, it never did make sense to me where these cars were going. I started work for a supplier to Holden in late 2003, and at least for a year and a bit(from memory they got rid of night shift mid 2005), they were building 3 shifts x 280 cars = 840 cars per day x 5 days = 4200 (and often did a saturday shift) + 280 = 4480 cars per week. From memory in 2004, they made just over 200,000 cars at Adelaide.

[Jason[98.EL]]

not looking good for the entire automotive industry

thinking of those affected

[BroadyFord]

Two words: the dollar.

Indeed, the high AUD will be the death of this country.

And to think that the RBA says we should be "grateful" that the AUD is high? Turn it up FFS!

[BENT_8]

Originally Posted by Resurrection

When Mitsubishi closed Holden picked up some of these people. Now where in Adelaide will 400 ex-Holden people go to find alternative employment?

My guess would be 10 Langford Drive Elizabeth...

[Dr Smith]

Originally Posted by BENT_8

My guess would be 10 Langford Drive Elizabeth...

For us non-SA's I take it this is a Federal Government dept. office...

[Dr Smith]

Originally Posted by BroadyFord

Two words: the dollar.

Indeed, the high AUD will be the death of this country.

And to think that the RBA says we should be "grateful" that the AUD is high? Turn it up FFS!

As a manufacturer I have to say the high Australian dollar hasn't seen the cost of my imported raw materials (chemicals) drop by anything in the last 2-3 years. Travelling OS or buying retail OS has been the only benefit of a high $Aust and when the time comes and it devalues or the OS currencies (some of which have been deliberately devalued like the Yen), we won't be able to take advantage of cheap OS holidays, or see the Mazda 3 as the top selling car and we'll all suffer because nothing will be made here.

Good luck to the Holden workers.

[Kingsley]

Sad news for those affected.

[mik]

The thing that annoys me, is this country was once all about making stuff, these days no one seems to give a toss, every single week in the news is more cut backs, more companies closing or moving over seas.
Companies will only continue banging their heads against the wall trying to build/ make stuff for so long before the easier optios like importing happen.

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by mik

The thing that annoys me, is this country was once all about making stuff, these days no one seems to give a toss, every single week in the news is more cut backs, more companies closing or moving over seas.
Companies will only continue banging their heads against the wall trying to build/ make stuff for so long before the easier optios like importing happen.

I think I see what you're getting at: there has been a societal shift from once being proud to own and support Australian made, to one of apathy or even a cringe-factor. This article explains it a little:

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/562...australia-lost

There was an event of great moment last month. It may have seemed then a temporary aberration, but is this month now confirmed.

It happened silently; the tapping of data-entry keys recording new vehicle registrations its only soundtrack.

Perhaps few saw the 'totality' of the moment, of a new picture now described by multiple small shifts.

But it’s there in the VFACTS for March 2013. They show that the transformation of the Australian motoring landscape that has been occurring for two generations is now complete.

And the notion of an indigenous Australian car - uniquely ours, uniquely Australian - is now lost. It’s there, but barely. The Australian car parc is now indistinguishable from a global one.

Of the 97,400 cars sold in Australia last month, just 3.5 percent, or 3418 sedans, wagons and utes, were the ‘traditional Aussie family car’ carrying a Ford or Holden badge on the nose.

That neither brand, neither Ford and not even Holden - those once-unassailable symbols of our industry that carried Australian families into a modern age of consumerism and pluralism - can now be found in the top three of new car sales rankings is not just significant for what is, but for what it says about this country.

It describes 'a new Australia'; of a separation from what were once important notions of identity as an Australian, and of old loyalties, but now consigned to a generation past.

Once, Australian roads everywhere were entirely dominated by 'the big three': Holden, Ford and Chrysler.

American companies all - sedans, station wagons and utes - but engineered for Australia, and made by Australians.

They were strong cars, as capable of enduring a life on gravel rural roads as on suburban streets; sedans that could accommodate four kids abreast across a slippery vinyl back seat, and would outlast almost anything.

They were popular because they were Australian at a time when being 'Australian' was important - when the fires of a Pacific and European war had forged an unshakeable sense of national identity, pride and of Australian egalitarian capability.

But these cars were also popular because they provided - then - the best answer to the needs of Australian motorists.

Even the smallest workshop in the smallest country town could service and repair these cars, every mechanic knew his way around a grey or red six, Chrysler's slant six, or Ford's 'super pursuit' 170.

Sure, a protectionist conservative government - with arch-protectionist 'Black Jack' McEwen as Minister for Trade - ensured the local vehicle manufacturers were adequately protected.

Local vehicle manufacturers then sat behind a 35 percent tariff wall; by the end of the 1960s, it had risen to 45 percent, and climbed to an astonishing 57.5 percent for the ten years from 1978 to 1988.

As if that wasn't enough, there were also quotas (quantitative restrictions) buttressing the tariff wall and other equally artificial constructs such as the Australian automobile content plan.

But, protected or not, they were 'our cars', engineered for hard roads and a harsh country, and Australians headed first to Holden, Ford and Chrysler showrooms.

And for post-war new Australians, mostly from the UK, Italy and Greece, a shiny new Holden, Falcon or Valiant in the garage was a symbol of a new life, of financial independence, and of 'arrival'... of being part of this exciting and still-new country.

But consumerism is all about choice.

And an economically powerful, well-travelled and outward-looking population bulge of baby boomers ensured that as quickly as English brands cascaded into a self-destructing British Leyland, so the new brands - Toyota, Datsun, Renault, Volvo, and later Mazda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW and others - found a market with an increasing appetite for choice and individuality.

Most, in the mid-sixties, were built here - the tariff walls and quotas made sure of that - but as those walls fell, so too did the shift to imports turn a trickle into a stream, and later into a flood.

And those old loyalties, to American brands and to the US, to a partner in war whose blood was spilled alongside the blood of Aussie diggers in our time of peril, were lost with a generation now also all-but gone.

It's hard to imagine now the potency and importance of that relationship with America. And why, of course, the Australian Labour Government under post-war Prime Minister Ben Chifley in 1947 looked first to America and to Chevrolet to develop an 'Australian car'.

The result, the Holden 48-215, the venerable FX, became a sales juggernaut.

GM Holden swept all before it through the next decade to take more than half of the total new vehicle market. Ford’s XK Falcon, arriving in 1960, and Chrysler’s Valiant, were its only real challengers.

Imagine now an Australia as homogenous and predictable. And as proud of itself and its capabilities as it once was.

Consumerism, pragmatism, the rise of the individual, all these things weigh against that old Australia and its unique home-grown industry of family cars.

But that isn’t all that later weighed against it. By 2004, the tariff protection to the Australian car industry had fallen to a tissue-thin 10 percent, and, since 2010, an even thinner 5.0 percent.

To compound the difficulty for local manufacturers, at the same time as Australian tariff walls have been disappearing - they've dropped by 27.5 percent in 20 years - the Australian dollar has been rising.

In April 2004, it was at just 49 cents to the US dollar. It is now at 104 cents to the 'greenback', more than 100 percent higher than its 2004 value.

Apply that shift in numbers to vehicle imports.

In the absence of other factors, imported cars have had a 27.5 percent cost impost removed over the past 20 years. At the same time, the high-value Aussie dollar, at twice its value just ten years ago, has delivered an additional 100 percent bonus to importers.

Perversely, by its policy of not intervening in the artificially high value of the dollar, the Reserve Bank of Australia is, in a cack-handed way, creating an incentive to importers and an artificial market advantage (a ‘reverse tariff’ if you like, one that punishes the local product).

Black Jack would be turning in his grave.

This happy set of circumstances is a boon for Mazda, BMW, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and the like, and, in equal measure, a monstrous double whammy for our local manufacturers.

Spare a thought then for their world and how rapidly they have had to adapt to such changing market circumstances and such massive disadvantage.

That they are still here at all is a miracle. Or, let’s give credit where it’s due, more a fact of adept management, quite astonishing flexibility, and yes, enduring products.

Here then is a snapshot of the new Australia: the top ten brands in sales for March 2013. It’s taken five decades, but the Pacific shift is now complete… our top three brands are from the opposite side of the Pacific.

VFACTS Vehicle Sales March 2013: Top Ten Brands
BRAND SALES SHIFT (compared to March 2012)
Toyota 18,653 + 1.0%
Mazda 9112 - 2.5 %
Nissan 8408 + 1.2%
Hyundai 8402 + 7.6%
Holden 8283 - 18.8%
Ford 6434 - 13.7%
Mitsubishi 5147 - 14.3%
Volkswagen 4299 - 4.1%
Subaru 4219 +73.4%

And here are the top ten models.

VFACTS Vehicle Sales March 2013: Top Ten Best-selling Models
MODEL (click each for more) SALES SHIFT (compared to March 2012)
Mazda3 3786 -0.8%
Toyota Corolla 3512 +12.6%
Toyota HiLux (4X4 and 4X2) 3127 (4X4: -6.9%; 4X2: -26.1%)
Hyundai i30 2595 +15.3%
Nissan Navara (4X4 and 4X2) 2499 (4X4: -8.6%; 4X2: +120.1%)
Holden Cruze 2335 -18.9%
Mitsubishi Triton (4X4 and 4X2) 1992 (4X4: +41.4%; 4X2: -41.1%)
Toyota Camry 1916 -18.2%
Mazda CX-5 1830 +29.0%
Ford Ranger (4X4 and 4X2) 1685 (4X4: +91.7%; 4X2: +23.0%)

Commodore came in at 11th with 1600 sales. Add in ute sales of 433, and it would sit in seventh place.

In this top ten, eight cars have been gifted the competitive advantage of a 100 percent revision in the currency in the past ten years; only the Holden Cruze and Toyota Camry compete largely without it (notwithstanding the smaller benefit each accrues from imported parts and components used in manufacture).

2014 holden cruze australia 02

Where once Holden exported to 17 countries, now vehicle imports come from plants from no less than 27 countries. Such is the state of our currency.

Australian vehicle imports topped $15billion in 2012.

In this context, Government support for local vehicle manufacturing is less than piddling.

In the world that I occupy, keeping a viable industry here, looking after a world class local manufacturing sector, and looking after Australian jobs – our mates and neighbours, after all – is worth at least a piddling amount.

And, more to the same point, is worth the active support of all levels of Government through vehicle purchasing until the aberration of an artificially high currency, and the advantage it gives importers, subsides with the recovery of the global economy.

A little of that quaint old-fashioned Australian pride in our local industry wouldn’t go astray at the moment. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Tim O’Brien
TMR Managing Editor

[BENT_8]

Originally Posted by Dr Smith

For us non-SA's I take it this is a Federal Government dept. office...

For a chance of winning 200k in tonights hot seat you have answered 'federal government office'

Had you have said local government office, you would have been wrong as they are already broke.

Had you said Bridgestone, you would have been wrong as they are already closed down.

Had you said the name of any number of job network providers you would have been wrong as this is Elizabeth after all.

The correct answer is Centrelink, a federal government office...cue confetti and flashing lights

[BroadyFord]

I am attending an event on Wednesday where there is a good chance Abbott or Mirabella or both will also be in attendance.

If I get a chance to speak to either I'll sure as hell be asking them what they're going to do about all this.

[prydey]

Originally Posted by BroadyFord

Two words: the dollar.

Indeed, the high AUD will be the death of this country.

And to think that the RBA says we should be "grateful" that the AUD is high? Turn it up FFS!

i wonder if anyone stops to think about the consequences, if indeed the high dollar does cause local manufacturing to cease.

what happens if local manufacturing ceases, and the dollar falls. what if it falls back to 2004 levels? with no local manufacturing, car prices would skyrocket!! i bet all those cursing the govt handouts won't be so vocal then.

[DJM83]

Wheres the Holden is shutting up shop articles in the media, surely there will be a few.


I feel for the employees losing their jobs

[buggerlugs]

I was told about 8 years ago by a wise old man that manufacturing would be dead in this country by 2020. There is still seven years to go.............

[Bossxr8]

Is the government just going to sit back and watch our industries burn or are they going to grow a pair and do something to protect them, like all the other countries do with their auto industries.

We all hear about how Labor are such a great friend to the auto makers but if they have friends like these who needs enemies. Cash handouts won't do **** if its just a free for all market for imports.

[neptune blue]

Originally Posted by BroadyFord

I am attending an event on Wednesday where there is a good chance Abbott or Mirabella or both will also be in attendance.

If I get a chance to speak to either I'll sure as hell be asking them what they're going to do about all this.

And if you do get a chance all you will get is spin
That's all those self serving parasites ever do and I'm talking about both major parties but lets not turn this thread into a debate about politics

[ryeman]

If any Federal Govt gives any 'southern state' any more assistance, imagine the Sydney media reaction!

[mik]

Originally Posted by Road_Warrior

I think I see what you're getting at: there has been a societal shift from once being proud to own and support Australian made, to one of apathy or even a cringe-factor. This article explains it a little:

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/562...australia-lost

That article pretty much says it all .............sadly.

[Eaturbo]

The high aussie dollar is stuffing the whole country, Mining is stuffed from the double wammie of the high aussie $$$ and the low commodity. The car industry is stuffed from the High Aussie $$$$$ and the raft of cheap imports. Its about time the government made at step to help us and not every other country in the World. I say we need someone like Jamie Mcintyre as the head of the country. He has some great ideas and is all about looking after Australians. Put the tarif back on imports, than we will have to buy more aussie made cars wether we like it or not. Our industries are more important than a few stupid car features.

[Eaturbo]

Aussie cars use to be just as feature packed as imports when volumes were high and there was money to afford the R&D to put these new features in. As volume dropped so too did the features.

[BroadyFord]

^^ On that basis I guess it's appropriate to blame a few greedy selfish currency traders in New York and London for Australian manufacturing's implosion.