By CASEY NEILL
AT LEAST six companies and 300 jobs in Melbourne’s south-east are on the line, following Toyota’s decision to leave Australia.
South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance (SEMMA) executive officer Adrian Boden said Toyota was the biggest nail in the automotive manufacturing industry’s coffin.
He said Toyota produced about 140,000 cars in Australia and purchased about 70 per cent of the components here, compared to about 50 per cent at Holden and Ford.
“In December we had a number of companies who told us the Holden decision was going to make their life difficult but they could survive, but if Toyota left it would be a different question,” he said.
He said preliminary investigations following last week’s announcement indicated about six companies in the south-east might go under, affecting up to 300 people.
“There will be a number of others,” he said.
Mr Boden said SEMMA representatives would visit companies in danger and look for opportunities for them to work with other SEMMA members to save jobs.
“You have to have growth to absorb them,” he said.
“We don’t have that growth at the moment.”
He said pumping money into innovation wasn’t the answer.
“Manufacturing’s been innovating for 200 years. It happens all the time,” he said.
“It’s how do we take to market those innovations? We need to market them overseas.”
Mr Boden said a government ‘buy Australian’ policy would help.
“Don’t just buy on lowest price,” he said.
Lyndhurst MP Martin Pakula met with Mr Boden last Friday, 14 February.
“We discussed the potential impact of the auto industry withdrawal on business owners, workers and their families, as well as the flow-on effects for other small businesses that rely on trade in industrial zones in the south-east,” he said.
Mr Pakula said he’d visit auto component manufacturers in the area over the coming weeks, to discuss what assistance they might need.
He said the State Government needed to support businesses to adapt, to export and to diversify.
Jill Wilcox, from Wilcox Metal Finishing, said Toyota’s decision was “a disaster” for the area and the country.
“We were all hoping that it wouldn’t happen,” she said.
“We’re hoping to keep on going because we do have other customers.
“But we’re going to lose our volume. The car industry is big volume.”
Wilcox Metal Finishing has been in business for more than 50 years, is a third-generation family company and employs 23 people.
It puts rust-proofing on metal car components. About 80 per cent of its business is automotive.
“We used to run three shifts, 24 hours a day a few years ago,” Ms Wilcox said.
“That’s how much it’s declined with things going off-shore.
“We’re losing all these skills and factories.”
Ms Wilcox said the company would now seek more work, including interstate, over the next three years.
