HSV moving house

Having announced its intention to take a 50 per cent stake in New Age Caravans earlier this week, Walkinshaw Automotive Group has now revealed plans to shift Holden Special Vehicles and its other divisions from its historic and ageing Clayton factory to a new facility by the end of 2017.

WAG has signed a 15-year lease on 28,195 square-metre complex just a few kilometres from the current site in Clayton South. The deal is estimated to be costing around $1 million per year in rent.

HSV will be joined at the new facility by RAM truck converter American Special Vehicles and WAG’s various other automotive performance, racing, design, engineering and development operations.

The move will be completed just after the closure of Holden and Toyota’s assembly plants signals the end of mass vehicle manufacturing in Australia.

“This is a demonstration that we are growing and that we have a firm commitment to becoming Australia’s leading design, engineering and manufacturing business in niche products,” Walkinshaw Automotive Group chairman Ryan Walkinshaw told motoring.com.au.

“Moving to this new facility will give us an opportunity to plan exactly where we want everything to sit,” he added.

“At the moment we have been strung up by historical, geographical issues, so having everything together will have benefits."

However, the announcement of the move to the new and more modern facility is not accompanied by a clearer indication of the future of HSV, although both Holden and WAG sources quietly express confidence the deal will continue into the new era of an imported Commodore.

WAG will take over from National Broadband Network provider Corning Cables in the South Clayton facility.

“It is three buildings all very close together, so we will be able to have the whole team from all the different businesses all within close proximity and it will be a fantastic opportunity,” said Walkinshaw.

“We looked at various different options such as building our own brand new facility, but the building we are moving into some of the rooms we have there are absolutely fantastic and you would be spending an absolute fortune to replicate that elsewhere.

“We have been very fortunate that we have been able to take that over.”

This will be the third home for the HSV, which was established by Ryan Walkinshaw’s late father Tom in the Melbourne suburb of Notting Hill in 1987 and moved to the former Nissan manufacturing plant in Clayton in 1994.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to find a new home that aesthetically allows us to demonstrate the business that lies within it,” said Walkinshaw.

“No disrespect to our current facilities but I have always felt that a facility is a bit of a face of your business, and I don’t feel our current facilities reflected that in the past.

“So it is an opportunity for us to not only consolidate all of our businesses geographically together much better than we currently have which will have benefits, but it allows us to have carte blanche on how we design the interior to meet our future growth as a business.”

Meanwhile, Walkinshaw shed some more light on the investment in New Age Caravans, which is expected to be finalised within one month.

“We believe New Age is a fast growing and fantastic business and we hope we can potentially add value, in small ways at first and then in bigger ways in the future, by delivering new product innovation and bringing some of the disciplines across from the automotive industry that aren’t necessarily the industry standard in caravans,” he said.

“We’ll be looking at new materials, innovative technologies and chassis development, all sorts of things to support New Age in its vision of becoming the number one caravan business in Australia.”

Walkinshaw also confirmed WAG technical chief Joel Stoddart’s time at caravan industry leader Jayco had helped generate interest in investing in New Age.

“Caravans were already something that were on our radar, but Joel doing his time at Jayco and coming back certainly helped lead us in that direction.”