Pelligra Group to spend $250 million on Elizabeth Holden site to transform it into Lionsgate Business Park

THE Pelligra Group is mostly unknown in South Australia but that is likely to change as the burgeoning Victorian family firm pours millions into its newly acquired former Holden factory.

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UNKNOWN in South Australia, the Pelligra Group has taken over the ownership of Elizabeth’s former General Motors Holden site with plans to splash $250 million to transform it into a cutting-edge manufacturing hub, Lionsgate Business Park.

Pelligra Group does not do half measures.

Founded by the current chairman Ross Pelligra’s grandfather, also called Ross, who migrated to Victoria from Sicily as a young man, the family concern has morphed into an industrial and construction powerhouse with substantial interests in and around Melbourne but, significantly, with a portfolio spreading steadily into China and India.

The Pelligra Group, headquartered in Derrimut, 18 kilometres west of the Melbourne CBD has expanded voraciously over the past decade with offices now stretching from Singapore to Hong Kong and the Philippines.

It has 700 staff, including 240 in India plus a board of 22 directors. It’s a figure the 39-year-old chairman says is integral to future building. “We’re a big company,” he said simply.

Ross Pelligra, Chairman of the Pelligra Group pictured at his newly purchased property, Picture: Matt Turner.

Its Melbourne footprint is understated but massive, flashy CBD buildings are noticeable only by their absence. Pelligra has grown by developing outer suburban, blue collar tracts of land into vast commercial, mixed use entities including:

OFFICES, apartments, gym, retail spaces and car parking in Epping, Melbourne.

A MULTIPURPOSE business centre in Roxburgh Park, a thriving growth area near Melbourne airport.

THE Tek Foods factory in Somerton, Victoria, which involved the construction of seven factories, 15 offices, warehouse, a supermarket, and a cafe.

TRANSFORMING a century-old heritage building, the John Darling & Son Flour Mill in Albion, in Melbourne’s west.

There is also a partnership with Chinese monolith Lesso, an industrial group providing home building materials with whom Pelligra is about to undertake a $1.4 billion uplift around Rockbank on Melbourne’s Western Highway.

Lionsgate will follow the development of a former ECH site in Largs North as South Australia’s second Pelligra undertaking.

While the rush to push Pelligra towards the higher echelon of global developers and innovators is driven by Ross Pelligra and his highly capable development manager Sean Doyle (still in his mid 20s), it is underpinned by the age old philosophy of hard work.

Mr Pelligra has visited Adelaide more than 20 times already this year in a desire to seal a deal, abetted all along by CBRE industrial director David Reid.

Pelligra Group chairman Ross Pelligra pictured with GM Holden Director of manufacturing, engineering and facilities Matthew Goodwins. Picture: Matt Turner

Visits to 70 countries reinforces the scope of Mr Pelligra’s ambition but loyalty is central to the Pelligra enterprise.

“At the heart of Pelligra is an ambitious mission to not only consider community needs and aspirations but to ensure that projects are structured to allow for a long term positive legacy,” is a company motif.

Sporting clubs, retail and recreation precincts lie next for Lionsgate once the manufacturing park is up and running, Mr Pelligra said.

It will take time, the masterplan stretches to 20 years and is ever evolving said Sean Doyle but the will and intent is there.

It’s all about the legacy.