Mazda Australia opens multi-million-dollar new HQ

Mazda Australia's new state-of-the-art headquarters officially opened its doors today in Melbourne, signalling the company's desire to head upmarket and capitalise on its upward momentum as the country's second best-selling car brand behind Toyota.

Located in Mulgrave, not far from the national HQs of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the huge new facility will house the company's 215 staff and includes new training facilities for dealer technicians to attain a Certificate III in Light Vehicle Mechanical Technology.

While the architecturally-designed five-star green-credentialed structure the company has leased is a fitting monument to Mazda's status as the second most-popular car brand in Australia, with a record 114,024 new Mazdas finding homes in 2015, the company says it's not chasing the number one spot.

Yuji Nakamine, one of Mazda's most senior global executives, smashed open a drum full of sake as part of the HQ's opening ceremony and stated he was hugely satisfied with the Australian operation, calling its operations "the best practice in the Mazda world, globally", but he stated that dethroning Toyota was not a priority.

"Number one in this [Australian] market is Toyota, with 17 or 18 per cent market share. Toyota is very strong in fleet business. The issue to overcome Toyota is a stretch in my opinion," said Nakamine, who said the company's focus is on private buyers and improving the customer experience.

"Frankly speaking, targeting Toyota as the number one brand is not something I'm desperately pursuing at the moment," he said.

Mazda Australia plans to expand its dealer network from 130 showrooms to 134, and although that may not sound like much, the company's huge sales growth has occurred without significant dealer expansion in the last few years.

Some of Mazda's – and Australia's – most popular vehicles are the Mazda2 light car, Mazda3 small car, the CX-3 small SUV and the CX-5 medium SUV.

Mazda Australia sales director, Vinesh Bhindi, said Australians are clearly impressed with the brand's vehicles, service and retained value, but he said it would be premature to suggest the company's recent growth will be maintained.

Asked how much bigger Mazda can grow, Bhindi suggested it would depend largely on the market.

"Our advisers say there's going to be steady growth [in the Australian new-vehicle market]. It also depends on what our competition does. The three brands that manufacture here will soon stop, but they'll have replacement vehicles produced in other countries," he said.

"It's hard to plan out what our market share will be at this level – it's an unknown. We plan based on what products we get from Mazda corporation.

"Where we are, we're very happy with, I think there'll be more opportunity in the short-term. In the long-term, we'll have to wait and see what opportunity comes up."

Bhindi reiterated Nakamine-san's view that challenging Toyota was not a priority.

"I think with our current portfolio we don't cover all segments … And it's not something we put as a goal to be number one. We look at products, opportunities and a good business model."