Commodore to be half foreign
From:
By Robert Wilson
August 30, 2005
ALMOST half the components on the Holden Commodore will be built overseas when the latest version of Australia's most popular car is released next July.
Industry experts estimate that just 55 per cent of products installed on Holden's VE Commodore will be produced by local suppliers, compared with 75 per cent in the current model.
Faced with falling sales in its core large-car segment, and the failure of its locally developed four-wheel-drive models, Holden has dumped local component makers and sourced parts from as far away as Mexico, Thailand, the US and China.
Automotive industry sources say at least seven Australian-based suppliers have been replaced with overseas competitors, with the car's glass, differential, plastics and electronics now coming from abroad.
"Some of it has been forced on them, such as importing their engine blocks from Mexico, after (component maker) Ion went under," one source said. "But there's clearly been, shall we say, a robust pricing policy at work."
Remaining local components in the new Commodore include most of the engine, body panels, seats and air-conditioning.
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Holden - the local arm of US automotive giant General Motors - is also a major Australian exporter, shipping more than 50,000 cars and almost 150,000 engines each year from its plants at Elizabeth, in South Australia, and Fishermans Bend, in Victoria.
Holden told workers at its Elizabeth assembly plant on Thursday that a raft of issues, including falling demand for its Commodores, would see daily production slashed from 855 to 620 vehicles and jobs cut from 5700 to 4300 from next January.
Holden will achieve this by cutting the third shift at the plant. Officials from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union met company management yesterday as employees were briefed on the voluntary redundancy package.
The AMWU believes up to 900 workers will accept an offer comprising 4 weeks' pay plus 3 1/2 weeks' pay for every year of service and any long-service or other benefits. For the average Holden employee with 10 years' service, that equates to about $42,000.
The union has asked the company to keep the job cuts to less than 1000 until the new Commodore is released next July.
While Holden had dropped some local suppliers, it had invited others to participate in the VE program, spokeswoman Maya Donevska said.
Japanese body panel maker Hirotec, German transmission company ZF Lemforder and seat-maker Johnson Controls were building facilities in Adelaide near the Holden factory, she said.
"Holden's policy is, all things being equal, we prefer to use Australian suppliers but we have to remain globally competitive," Ms Donevska said.
The VE Commodore will be the least Australian of the four car models built here.
By their manufacturers' figures, the Ford Falcon and Territory are 85 per cent Australian, the current Toyota Camry is 79 per cent locally made and even Mitsubishi's 380 large car will be 62 per cent locally made, despite using an imported engine, when it is released next month.
Graeme Billings, an industrial analyst at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, said small suppliers that made up the bulk of the local components industry were battling multinationals that often had strategic reasons for working in the region.
not a bad deal.
.
Originally Posted by Rooboy
