Ford sells Melbourne sites, signalling end of road for car manufacturing
The last Australian-made Ford Falcon rolls off the production line.

Ford sells Melbourne sites, signalling end of road for car manufacturing

Motoring giant Ford has sold its vast Melbourne industrial sites in Broadmeadows and Geelong in a multi-million dollar deal that bookends an historic era of car manufacturing in Australia.

Six years after the global car company first announced it would end its local manufacturing operations in Australia, Ford signed a deal to offload the bulk of its plants to Melbourne-based developer and builder Pelligra Group.

Under the deal, Ford will carve out and keep the land and buildings it currently uses in both locations into subdivisions.

The last Australian-made Ford, a blue XR6, rolled off the Broadmeadows assembly line in October three years ago. At the same time 600 workers lost their jobs when Ford closed its factory doors.

Pelligra plans to turn Ford’s land into high-end business and industrial parks housing thousands of jobs in manufacturing industries. The parks will be known as Fortek Geelong and Assembly Broadmeadows.

The bulk of Pelligra’s development experience is in Melbourne’s western suburbs, but the group three years ago tied up a deal to take over rival car manufacturer Holden’s redundant manufacturing plant in Adelaide and turn it into an industrial business park.

Director Ross Pelligra said he had similar plans for up to 85 hectares he inherited from Ford.

Ford’s Australian operations were concentrated over three sites, two in Geelong and a 60 hectare facility in Broadmeadows. Combined they have more than 265,000 square metres of factory floor and warehousing, equivalent to about 13 times the size of the MCG’s playing field.

They were put up for sale last year with an estimated value of about $75 million.

The final price paid by Pelligra is understood to far exceed that figure, although neither party would disclose the amount citing confidentiality.

Kay Hart, Ford’s chief executive of Australia and New Zealand, said the car giant will keep its existing research, design and engineering facilities in both Geelong and Broadmeadows as well as its You Yangs car-testing proving ground at Lara.

“[The] sites have played a central role in the history of Australia’s auto industry as centres of technical excellence, and have been part of the fabric of the local communities for generations,” Ms Hart said.

The global car giant first announced it would end local manufacturing in 2013, a move that saw it shed 1300 jobs and, along with the closure of rival manufacturers, prompted the cascading shut down of multiple other local car part manufacturers and suppliers.

Parts of Ford’s distinctive white and red brick plant in Geelong, which greets motorists as they drive along the Princes Highway, are covered by heritage restrictions.

The heritage structures will be restored and turned into innovation and research hubs tied to the area’s universities, Mr Pelligra said.

Pelligra, a privately-owned family company, will spend $500 million – including the sale price – on the first stage of developing the sites, focusing on refurbishing and leasing the existing buildings.

“We’re concentrating on manufacturing but we are going to mix it up. It won’t feel like an old school industrial park,” he said.

Over the past five years industrial land in Melbourne and Sydney has become a highly sought after commodity for e-commerce and logistics warehousing, sparking a run up in values.