Ford's fast track to China

Marin Burela has been in the role of Ford Australia President for a matter of months. Yet in just that short period, he has already overturned a major cost-cutting measure implemented by one of his predecessors -- the closure of the Geelong engine plant.

The announcement that the Ford six-cylinder engine would continue to be built in Geelong was greeted with guarded relief by those whose employment depended on local production for the inline powerplant. It did prompt the question, what has changed to make the engine's ongoing local production viable?

According to Sinead McAlary, Ford Australia's Communications Manager, the company has been approached irregularly over the years by other companies outside the Ford world and outside Australia for a deal on engine supply.

"We have had approaches by a number of parties who appear to be interested in using our I6 for different applications...but again, there's nothing I can talk about now because the discussions are very early days and it's not yet clear which, if any of them, will come to fruition," she told the Carsales Network.

McAlary revealed that the pace of those enquiries has stepped up since Ford announced that the Geelong plant would remain open past 2010.

Subsequent investigation by the Carsales Network suggests that an Australian-based company has approached Ford to buy engine production and ship the sixes to China, possibly to power towing tugs at airports. These towing tugs depend on LPG-fuelled engines developing high torque outputs to move airliners around the hard-standing at airports, so the Falcon engine is ideal for that purpose.

It's high-tech and fuel-efficient for the torque it produces; all the kinks to run it on LPG have already been sorted; the Aussie dollar is down on its knees, so the engine is an affordable export commodity; and China is a large-scale user of Australian-supplied LPG.

And this is reportedly just one of the opportunities opening itself up to Ford for the supply of the Geelong six.