Toyota to close its Australian tech centre

Motoring site motoring.com.au reports that the Toyota Japan-owned research and development centre in Melbourne that symbolised the brand’s ambitious growth plans for Australia in the 2000s will close by June 2016 with the loss of more than 100 highly skilled engineering jobs.

Established in 2003 in high-tech facilities in the eastern Melbourne suburb of Notting Hill near Monash University, the Toyota Technical Centre Australia (or TTC-AU) is one of five such development facilities globally.

Its closure is the direct result of the end of Toyota’s local manufacturing at the Altona plant in 2017. Toyota had forecasted a limited ongoing role for TTC-AU when the closure of Altona was first announced last year, but that decision has changed with two out of four redundancy rounds at the centre already completed.

Ironically, the closure comes following the completion of the centre’s biggest ever job, performing a significant amount of the engineering work on the new HiLux utility and the Fortuner SUV derived from it.

Out of the current 160 staff, 19 will be absorbed into Toyota Australia to concentrate on localisation work, focusing on vehicle evaluation, multimedia and customer quality engineering. About 30 staff will relocate to Toyota technical centres in the USA and Japan.

The closure of TTC-AU means Toyota is moving in the opposite direction to Ford, which is growing its engineering strength in Australia despite the closure of its manufacturing facilities in 2016.

Holden is taking something of a middle ground, retaining a significant design centre in Australia as well as some engineering strength and its Lang Lang proving ground. Toyota would retain its Anglesea test site, which would continue to be used by local engineers as well as visiting engineers developing vehicles.

A small Melbourne-based design group, Toyota Style Australia, is expected to continue.

Source: motoring.com.au