IVECO Australia to cease local manufacturing

IVECO Australia has announced it will cease local manufacturing at its Dandenong plant from mid-2022, instead switching its focus and expertise to customising a fully imported range of models to meet the needs of Australian and New Zealand customers.

The brand has imported most of its range from Europe for several years, but this latest announcement confirms local manufacturing will formally cease. The announcement won’t come as a surprise to many in the wider trucking industry, especially as it follows on from the recent demise of the locally designed and built ACCO vocational truck, which had been a mainstay of the plant for six decades.

The ACCO had been produced at the Dandenong facility since 1962 – first under the International Harvester brand, and then under IVECO name since the early 1990s.

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Two plants remaining

The move sees the closure of yet another local automotive manufacturing production line, following in the wake of passenger car makers like Holden, Ford, and Toyota, and leaves just two active local truck manufacturing plants in Australia: Volvo Group Australia in Brisbane, and PACCAR Australia in Melbourne.

The company says the development of a Customisation & Innovation Centre (CIC) will see it instead concentrate its local engineering expertise on the customisation and innovation of its products for the Australian and New Zealand markets, which will be fully imported from IVECO’s manufacturing plant in Madrid, Spain, from mid-next year.

In addition to delivering a “a more streamlined design and body fitment process” for local customers and body builders, the development of the CIC will allow the company to “work more closely with Europe and local partners to explore areas such as alternative propulsion solutions, digitisation, connectivity and autonomous driving”.

IVECO Australia and New Zealand Managing Director, Michael May, said the development of the CIC would strengthen one of IVECO’s key selling points in the Australian and NZ markets.

“Historically, our most unique value proposition has been our ability to customise and specialise vehicles for our market, leveraging the expertise of our local engineering team and the local facility,” he said.

“By further enhancing this service, we believe there is considerable potential to provide additional value to existing and prospective customers, while growing the CIC’s capacity and scope of work.”

New models, sooner

Mr May also highlighted how the switch to full importation would allow IVECO Australia to better align with model introduction timings, such as the looming arrival of the IVECO S-WAY, and a further iteration of the ACCO.

Mr May said the switch to local customisation of fully imported vehicles was a natural progression of IVECO’s ANZ transformation.

“Given our brand’s long history of manufacturing in Australia, this next step towards customisation strengthens our ability to remain agile and responsive to demanding regional requirements,” he said.

“This move will also ensure that we are in a position to offer the market the very latest in IVECO performance, comfort and safety innovation, in the most timely fashion, and at the same time, capitalise on our design and validation engineering expertise and customisation capabilities.”

It is not yet clear how many employees at IVECO’s Dandenong facility will be impacted by the move, but IVECO Australia says it will “provide appropriate support to the involved workforce”.