Toyota closes R&D centre

The first concrete sign of Toyota's wind-down of local manufacturing operations has come with the June 30 closure of the Toyota Technical Centre Australia research and development facility.

The next step in the process will come in late 2017 with the shut-down of the Altona vehicle assembly plant, where the Camry and Aurion are built.

Holden is due to shut its Elizabeth assembly plant in Adelaide around the same time, while Ford ceases operations on October 7 of this year, and last Friday ran the last Falcon ute down the Campbellfield line.

Owned by Toyota Japan and established in 2003 in high-tech facilities in the eastern Melbourne suburb of Notting Hill near Monash University, TTC AU was one of five such development facilities globally.

Its closure was the direct result of the end of Toyota's local manufacturing. It comes following the completion of the centre's biggest ever job, performing a significant amount of the engineering work on the latest HiLux utility and the Fortuner SUV derived from it.

The centre employed around 160 staff, of which Toyota Australia has retained 23, while another 30 have relocated to Toyota R&D facilities in Japan and the USA.

Toyota Australia has purchased the Notting Hill site as a temporary base for the continuation of product evaluation work. Two other TTC AU functions continue locally; multimedia development and customer quality engineering.

These functions are now being carried out at Toyota's Altona site, where product evaluation will also eventually be transferred.

The long term future of the Notting Hill site is unknown, but Toyota Australia has confirmed it will sell off portions of the Altona facility, while retaining elements of the property for its own use.

Included in that will be a Centre of Excellence that will include a training centre for staff and dealers, a consultancy service to supply management skills outside Toyota and a driver education and training facility.

Toyota will retain its Anglesea test site facilities, which will continue to be used by local engineers as well as visiting engineers developing vehicles.

A small Melbourne-based design group also continues on as part of Toyota Australia's product planning and development division.

The closure of TTC AU also signals the retirement of Toyota stalwart Max Gillard, who will leave the company on September 30 after more than 40 years service.

Gillard played a key role in the establishment of TTC AU, which represented the optimistic picture Toyota had in the early 2000s of the potential future Australia could play in its future plans for the region.

Toyota Japan funded and integrated TTC-AU into its global engineering network after the successful development and introduction to Australian manufacturing of the Avalon large car in 2000, which was a project Gillard led.

While never a big seller, it proved the capability of Australian engineers and paved the way for the introduction of the Camry-based Aurion V6 large car, which took on the established Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon in the large car market from 2006.

"For Australian engineering the Avalon was a turning point. It proved we could turn a reject car from the USA into a very, very good car for Australia." Gillard told motoring.com.au last year.

"People who owned an Avalon loved it.

"That was a really good project for us because it enabled us to know how to negotiate with Japan for a unique body."