Toyota workers farewell Altona factory as Melbourne-made Camry makes way for Japanese import

IT’S the end of the of the line for 2500 Toyota Australia factory workers today, but they won’t leave empty-handed.

A commemorative Toyota Camry hybrid leaves the assembly line. Picture: Joshua Dowling.

TOYOTA has rolled down the shutters on its Camry factory in Altona, ending 54 years of local manufacturing for the Japanese giant.

The last car rolled down the line at 12pm but the send-off ceremony was held behind closed doors.

Australia was the first country outside Japan where Toyota built cars, in 1963. The shutdown also makes Australia the first country where Toyota has closed a mass-production car and engine factory.

The closure comes one year after Ford shut its Broadmeadows and Geelong factories; Holden’s production line in Elizabeth, South Australia is due to fall silent in a fortnight, on October 20. Holden’s engine plant in Port Melbourne closed in November 2016.

Altona Plant Manager, Manufacturing Engineering and Operations, Tony Ashamalla, with one of the last Camry sedans. Picture: Joshua Dowling.

The Altona plant was opened by then Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1995 and built more than 2 million of the 3.4 million cars produced locally since 1963.

Tony Ashamalla, 62, the manager of Toyota’s Altona plant for the past six years, said it was a sad day for workers but praised the company’s efforts to help them find new jobs.

“To see Toyota close, and see our highly skilled employees leaving the company, that’s the saddest part,” said Mr Ashamalla, one of Toyota’s longest serving employees with more than 41 years on the factory floor.

“But you cannot fault the lengths Toyota has gone to, to get people retrained and get new jobs,” he said.

The Toyota Camry factory in Altona has reached the end of the line. Picture: Joshua Dowling.

As with Holden and Ford, Toyota has been running job search programs for the past three years and paying for retraining.

“Some people wanted to be a nurse, others wanted to be a pilot, truck driver, (or get into) earthmoving,” says Mr Ashamalla. “It cost a lot of money, but the company never knocked anyone back from retraining. They accepted that and helped them retrain and paid their fees.”

Mr Ashamalla estimates 35 to 40 per cent of employees have certificates to work in specialised areas and 10 to 20 per cent are due to retire.

The job prospects of the remaining workers is unclear but all will leave with generous redundancy payouts, including discounts on new Toyotas for up to five years or a lifetime, depending on their length of service.

Toyota workers at the Altona manufacturing plant for the last shift before its closure. Pic: Supplied.

Andrew Hamilton, 57, a project co-ordinator who spent 24 years with Toyota, is looking forward to a change from factory life.

“I’ve enrolled to do a hospital orderly course, I want to do something completely different,” said Mr Hamilton. “I haven’t done the course yet but Toyota will pay for it.”

One of the oldest workers on Toyota’s production line is a character known simply as “Ziggy”, who is still going strong at the age of 70.

“If you prove to yourself you’re able to meet the requirements of (the production) line speed and your health is good, you’re fine to continue,” says Mr Ashamalla.

“I had Ziggy on inspections, checking under the car bodies. Not everybody after 65 years has to retire. He has an amazing eye for detail, he wanted to stay on, so the company kept him on.”

Mr Ashamalla said factory workers “made the company”.

Factory manager Tony Ashamalla says Toyota has done everything possible to retrain workers for their next job. Picture: Joshua Dowling.

“When we did the (shutdown) announcement in 2014 everybody was sad, everybody was in denial, wondering what they did wrong, they were blaming themselves,” he said. “But in the end it was not our fault, it was the difficulty of exports and tariffs.”

Decades of lowering import tariffs — eventually scrapped altogether on vehicles from big car-making countries such as the US, Japan, Thailand and South Korea — introduced cheaper imported cars to Australia and made it difficult for locally-made vehicles to compete on price.

Export opportunities evaporated as neighbouring developing countries built up car industries with labour and energy costs that were a fraction of those in Australia.

Holden will be last to turn out the lights on the Australian car manufacturing industry when its facility in Elizabeth near Adelaide closes on October 20.

This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling