Toyota Australia has announced it would cut up to 100 jobs – from a workforce of 2,500 – at its Altona plant from November.
The automaker said the decision calling for “voluntary redundancies” was in response to a drop in export orders, “making it unsustainable to keep the manufacturing workforce at its current size”.
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Exports make up about 70% of Toyota Australia’s output with the assembly plant expected to build approximately 104,000 Camry models which include hybrid and V6 Aurion variants.
The so called “workplace adjustment” will align labour with a decrease in production volume to match market demand as the number of cars built each day reduces from 470 to 431 vehicles.
“The exact number of voluntary redundancies will be determined based on the number of applications received and the skill-set of those employees. There will be no compulsory redundancies,” Toyota Australia said in a statement.
President and CEO Max Yasuda said it was a difficult decision to make, but was vital if the company wanted to move towards global competiveness.
“In the lead up to 2018 we need to reduce the cost of each of our locally built vehicles by A$3,800.
“Although we have made progress, we are now seeing gaps in our plans that must be closed to secure investment for the next generation vehicle and to maintain our export programme.”
Nominated employees will leave from Friday 29 November.
