{"id":593,"date":"2014-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/?p=593"},"modified":"2025-03-10T03:40:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T03:40:20","slug":"new-optimism-for-australias-automotive-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/new-optimism-for-australias-automotive-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"New optimism for Australia\u2019s automotive industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">Next month will mark one year since Ford announced that it would close its Australian manufacturing plants. That announcement kicked off a horror twelve months for the automotive manufacturing industry in this country \u2013 but a new report from\u00a0<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoskillsaustralia.com.au\/\">Auto Skills Australia<\/a><\/i>\u00a0is optimistic that there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n<p>Auto Skills Australia CEO Geoff Gwilym says \u201cThere won\u2019t be a collapse of the industry. It will be leaner, but it will also be more progressive and better positioned for the future of the sector. We foresee a lean, capable and modern industry going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite the looming closures of the Ford, Holden and Toyota plants, in 2012\/13 net employment in the automotive sector actually\u00a0<i>increased<\/i>. Gwilym points out that manufacturing only comprises 13% of the automotive industry and manufacturing job losses should be absorbed within other areas of the automotive sector.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur report shows that employment gains within car and parts wholesaling, repair and maintenance and tyre retailing has more than compensated for declines in employment within car and component manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Across the industry there were an additional 4,132 jobs created as repair and wholesale retailers continued to perform well. Since the number of cars owned by Australians continues to grow by almost half a million each year, retailers and repairers will continue to be in high demand.<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoskillsaustralia.com.au\/\">Auto Skills Australia<\/a><\/i>\u00a0found that many businesses were expecting growth in the next 12 months. \u201cThe industry is growing on average by 400,000 vehicles on the road each year and the industry needs to be capable of servicing and maintaining this growing fleet,\u201d Gwilym says. \u201cAt the moment growth in the non-manufacturing side of the industry is outpacing any decline.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-82 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn-01.cms-ap-v2i.applyflow.com\/oryx-people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mechanic-at-work-300x184-1.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn-01.cms-ap-v2i.applyflow.com\/oryx-people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mechanic-at-work-300x184-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn-01.cms-ap-v2i.applyflow.com\/oryx-people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mechanic-at-work-300x184-1.jpg 1024w\" alt=\"Mechanic at work\" width=\"300\" height=\"184\" \/>In fact, the report identifies a national shortage of 21,175 workers in key skills areas of the car industry. \u201cSo while manufacturing is facing tough times, retail, services and repairs represents the biggest part of the industry and it\u2019s searching for workers to maintain the nation\u2019s growing vehicle fleet. There already are many innovative small businesses in this respect and it\u2019s the ones which don\u2019t keep up with investment in new equipment and up-skilling requirements which will fall by the wayside,\u201d he says<\/p>\n<p>The automotive industry\u2019s contribution to Australia\u2019s GDP remained stable at 2.6%, equating to around $38.4 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Next month will mark one year since Ford announced that it would close its Australian manufacturing plants. That announcement kicked off a horror twelve months for the automotive manufacturing industry in this country \u2013 but a new report from\u00a0Auto Skills Australia\u00a0is optimistic that there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel. Auto Skills Australia CEO&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whats-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}