How RMA beat Walkinshaw and Premcar to Ford F-150 deal

RMA says an important reason it won the right to remanufacture the Ford F-150 to right-hand drive for Australia ahead of more established local engineering players is its global links with the Blue Oval.

The company is headquartered in Thailand and is a Ford Qualified Vehicle Modifier. It has previously completed work for Ford in Europe, North America, the Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.

RMA also has distribution rights for Ford products in South-East Asia.

But this is the first time it has teamed with Ford in Australia, where it is the primary investor in the F-150 project.

RMA won the right to develop the program ahead of the Walkinshaw Group and Premcar.

Walkinshaw already has factory-approved RHD pick-up conversion deals for the Chevrolet Silverado, RAM 1500 and Toyota Tundra, while Premcar works with Nissan Australia on the Navara and Patrol Warrior programs.

Former Ford manufacturing executive Trevor Negus, who worked for the car-maker for 30 years, came out of retirement to become general manager of RMA Automotive Australia two years ago.

“From what I understand RMA offered the trust of the longer-term relationship and clearly the quote was competitive,” he said during a media tour of the factory last week.

“The team we were able to pull together and the partners we’ve got doing the [F-150 conversion] design in Segula all clearly impressed Ford enough to give us the job.”

The RMAAA leadership team comprises former employees of car manufacturers including Ford and vehicle modifiers including Premcar.

“RMA has a rich history of modifying vehicles and whole lot with the Ford Motor Company all around the world and we’ve been able to pull together a leadership… that has a lot of experience in both industries,” said Negus.

“Our aim was to be nimble and more efficient than an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] but with OEM outcomes.”

The production line, located in the northern suburb of Mickleham, has the ability to remanufacture 20 examples of the F-150 per day on a single shift, which equates to about 5000 examples per year.

The 21,000 square-metre leased Mickleham site is a converted warehouse about the size of the MCG. It sits next to a new Ford Australia parts warehouse and only kilometres from the now flattened Ford manufacturing plant at Campbellfield.

RMAA has 250 employees on site, with 200 of them working on the assembly line, which has 65 individual stations. It takes around 22 hours over three working days for each F-150 to be converted.

Negus said the Mickleham plant was designed to be flexible.

“The whole facility has been built with other product in mind, so we have the capacity to take larger F-Series, we have the capacity to take other vehicles and we have another shift to go too.”

The process of pulling the facility together while coping with extensive COVID lockdowns was a significant challenge, he said. A primary concern was finding a workforce at a time of very low unemployment in Australia.

But he says that has turned into “one of the good news stories of this project”.

“The state government has helped us by funding employees who couldn’t otherwise find full-time employment.

“Those people were identified as nine different areas of the community that had trouble finding employment. So refugees, offenders who had just got out of prison, youth, women over 45. We’ve got examples of all of those here.

“One of the reasons we targeted this area is because of the previous automotive experience, the caravan manufacturing experience and because it’s a huge growth corridor for Melbourne.”

In all his years working in manufacturing, Negus said the start of production at Mickleham was a unique experience.

“When we first started running the vehicles down the line a few weeks ago people stood back and cheered. It makes you feel good.”

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au