
Toyota Motor Corporation Australia (TMCA), the production and sales subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in Australia, announced on Tuesday (3 October) it had ended 54 years of manufacturing in Australia as a news report predicted difficulties for the displaced workers.
Toyota was the first Japanese automaker to have assembled outside Japan – the first unit was a Tiara (predecessor of the Corona) built by local contract assembler Australian Motor Industries (AMI) in Melbourne from a CKD kit. Toyota eventually took over AMI.
Approximately 3,000 people, including current employees as well as former employees, suppliers, dealers and officials from TMC attended the closure ceremony held at the Altona plant which ultimately replaced the original AMI plant.
TMCA president Dave Buttner said: “Thanks to everyone’s long-standing efforts, Toyota became the top automobile manufacturer in Australia, and the vehicles produced here became a byword for quality and reliability not only in Australia but also in the world as the vehicles were exported to other regions like the Middle East.”
TMCA chairman Max Yasuda announced the establishment of the Toyota Community Foundation Australia to contribute to the region over the long term after the end of manufacturing. The foundation is expected to start with a fund of A$32m (US$24.9m; JPY2.8bn) and will provide educational support to children. Focusing on the western Melbourne suburb where the Altona plant is located, the plan first calls to provide support to students with economic difficulties and to schools with disadvantaged educational environments.
Yasuda said: “We would like to provide young Australians the opportunity to further continue their studies and careers and support young people’s dreams into the future.”
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By GlobalDataAkio Toyoda, TMC president, via video message, said: “I sincerely express my gratitude for the efforts of the employees, customers, suppliers, dealers, government officials, and local communities that have supported production activities in Australia. Although the manufacturing business will end today, we will continue to make further efforts to be an automobile manufacturer that will be loved by everyone here in Australia and be supported even more than before.”
TMCA will shift its sales and marketing functions from Sydney to its Melbourne headquarters, as it transitions to a national sales and distribution company from 2018.
The Altona plant will be re-established as a training and product development facility, leveraging previously accumulated knowledge and expertise to further develop workers, products, and services.
Following the decision to end manufacturing operations in Australia three years ago, TMCA has carried out re-employment assistance by providing employees with individual career consultations, job information, job fairs, job skills training, among other activities. It expects to continue with these activities until the middle of 2018.
Despite Toyota’s upbeat announcement, Australia’s ABC News said local communities were expected to be hit hard by the Toyota closing and that of GM Holden’s which follows in a few weeks.
Holden will close its Adelaide plant on 20 October, putting another 944 car workers out of a job.
Since shutting down its Australian operations last year, Ford and the government have spent millions on retraining workers but only about half them have been able to find new jobs, ABC said.
Former employees from those car factories face insecure employment, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) said.
“A great majority of them are finding casual work that may lead to full time work but obviously at extremely lower pay and conditions,” Paul Difelice of the AMWU’s vehicle division, said.
This was consistent with what has happened to former workers in the car industry when a manufacturer closes down, ABC noted.
In 2004, Mitsubishi closed its Lonsdale engine plant. Two years after closure, most former workers were still doing it tough, according to Professor Andrew Beer from Flinders University.
His studies showed only one third of those workers were able to find full time equivalent work.
One third were unemployed or underemployed and the remainder were not working at all.
However, there are targeted programmes to get former automotive workers into new training.
Ford had two major factories in Victoria Geelong and Broadmeadows. The two areas have been hit differently.
Cranes dot the skyline in Geelong and there are obvious signs of construction throughout the CBD, ABC said.
Government projects at both the state and federal level have helped to cushion the blow of losing the car maker, Bernadette Uzelac, CEO of the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, said.
Geelong would soon host the National Disability Scheme headquarters, in addition to the State Transport Accident Commission and Worksafe.
“The Ford closure has probably not had as dramatic effect as we might have thought it would have had before the closure,” Uzelac said.
“What’s happened since that time is that there’s been a lot of activity and development.”
Geelong is also experiencing a housing construction boom but Broadmeadows does not appear to be coping as well, ABC said.
Before Ford’s closure, it was one of the country’s most disadvantaged areas with an unemployment rate above 25%.
The closure not only hit the retrenched workers, but also businesses that relied upon them.
Victoria’s Minister for Training and Skills, Gayle Tierney, expects the Toyota shutdown will be a bigger hit to the economy compared to the Ford closure. This is partly because the newly retrenched workers will be competing with former Ford workers who still looking for jobs.
“There are going to be hundreds and thousands of people looking for jobs and coming onto the labour market at the same time,” Tierney told ABC.
A 27 years Toyota veteran told ABC he expected his financial situation to become tougher.
“The big difference would be is that we’re very well paid in the car industry,” he said.
“But the pay outside doesn’t seem to have moved in about 15 years from what I can see — so that’s the big readjustment.”
The promises of new and better jobs have not been delivered, AMWU’s Difelice said.
“Federal politicians said it will be OK because the job losses in the car industry would be replaced by better and more highly skilled jobs,” he said. “They just haven’t eventuated, it’s as simple as that,” he told ABC.
History of production at Toyota Motor Corporation Australia
- March 1959 – TMCA founded (original name was Australian Motor Industries, company name was changed to TMCA in May 1988)
- April 1963 – Tiara (Corona) assembly commenced at the Port Melbourne plant (current corporate headquarters location) (ended in February 1987)
- February 1967 – Crown assembly commenced (ended July 1980)
- July 1968 – Corolla assembly commenced (ended December 1988)
- October 1978 – Production of Corolla 4K engine commenced
- February 1987 – Camry assembly commenced
- May 1988 – Established UAAI, a joint – venture company, with GM Holden
- August 1993 – Camry export to Thailand commenced
- July 1994 – New Altona plant launched, and Corolla production commenced (ended December 1999)
- March – 1995 – Camry production at new Altona plant commenced
- February 1996 – Camry exports to Middle East commenced
- March 1996 – Joint venture with GM Holden terminated
- June 2003 – Established Toyota’s research and development base in Australia (TTCAP-AU)
- October 1906 – Aurion production commenced
- December 2006 – Camry hybrid production commenced
- November 2011 – New Camry production commenced
- February 2014 – End of manufacturing in Australia announced
- June 2016 – TTCAP-AU closure (vehicle evaluation, multimedia development, and quality assurance functions transferred to TMCA)
- August 2017 – Aurion production ended
- September 2017 – Camry hybrid production ended
TMCA volume
- Tiara: 1,684 units 1963-1965
- Corona: 336,197 1965-1987
- Crown: 46,690 1966-1980
- Corolla: 601,104 1967-1999
- Camry: 2,168,104 1987-2017
- Apollo (Camry derivative model supplied to GM Holden): 40,287 1989-1996
- Nova (Corolla derivative model supplied to GM Holden): 28,128 1989-1996
- Avalon (older generation than US equivalent): 44,741 2000-2005
- Aurion (V6 Camry): 184,180 2006-2017
Total: 3,451,115 1963-2017