Holden to be axed as early as 2016!

[b1ancardi]

Decision could be announced early next year

Holden's future is looking increasingly bleak as several Australian outlets are reporting the brand will be axed as early as 2016.
Citing senior government ministers, ABC is reporting Holden was prepared to make the announcement this week but decided to delay the bad news until early next year.
The Australian government has been looking into the possibility of providing financial assistance to the automotive industry but one source told the outlet that Holden will "leave Australia regardless of any assistance package."
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane dismissed the report but News Corp Australia says rumors have indicated a shutdown could be announced on December 20th. However, sources have said Holden is still debating whether or not to announce the shutdown before or after Christmas.



ABC Article - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-0...016-17/5138942

[Boyracer]

Asian wages are starting to hurt us but European car companies seem to survive.
Holden is a good brand so you have to ask what are they doing wrong that affects profit?

[dougall83]

maybe if new cars were actually affordable,more people would buy em?? my mrs chose a mitsubish over a ve, because of size, running cost, insurance ect, in the early days cars wer 1/4 of annual salary now there over 1/2 its just "unnafordable" to own a ssv over a mid size jap car,

[EVLRB30]

Holden's product range I ****, and build quality isn't that great, so many product recalls etc etc, and people don't want a 4 door family sedan anymore, most people opt for the mazda cx5, etc for a family car, and there cheaer to run too, look at Nissan they pulled out of Australian manufacturing years ago but they still hold a fair share if the market,

[Boyracer]

Well they marketed the Cruze and Barina pretty well as not everybody wants a big Commodore so could management be too top heavy with too many exces on big moola like the railway was?

[simmo4by]

Unfortunately Boyracer the market for small "chicks" cars is just that. Not everybody looking for a new car wants to cram a family of four into a Cruze or a Barina and it only takes up a minority market share. The commodores are way to expensive to run as an everyday car when you compare it to say a Japanese SUV which will do 7-9l per 100 km and often offer free or fixed price servicing. Not only that but they keep their resale value much better than a commodore or Falcon and still has enough space to fit the family and their gear.

Also when in the market for a sports car (Luxury item) most people will opt for a Jap turbo or BMW or Merc as they are cheaper to fuel and have better handling and performance. There is also the stigma of "hoon" attached to a commodre so most people willing to spend $70k will opt for something else without the stigma and a bit of class.

I might also add the manufacturing costs here in AUS are many time greater than in China or Thailand regardless of the amount of autonomy which may be a good thing if Holden move overseas, you might find that Holdens prices may fall in line with other brands and Holden as a business will start making money.

[dougall83]

Originally Posted by EVLRB30

Holden's product range I ****, and build quality isn't that great, so many product recalls etc etc, and people don't want a 4 door family sedan anymore, most people opt for the mazda cx5, etc for a family car, and there cheaer to run too, look at Nissan they pulled out of Australian manufacturing years ago but they still hold a fair share if the market,

+1 toushae

[Boyracer]

Maybe they could rationalize the management structure with a manager and admin for every five dealerships instead of every dealership?
Selling V8s to families in 2014 was never going to be easy, the brand deserves to be saved.
I thought Aussies never quit?

[zvonko]

Holden isn't Australian... it belongs to GM. GM as you know is American. The Americans are in dire **** at the moment, this was always going to happen. They only care about themselves. American companies are extremely inefficient in this day and age and have not been investing in new technologies or adapting to new market conditions. I'm sick of hearing how many Banks and Car Manufacturers could just gamble and play the market and then ask for a hand out when the going got tough and they lost the bet. It is evident, there is a big hole somewhere which no matter how much you try to patch up, it will just continue to open up and suck up everything. That hole is GM....

Then you have dealerships who were charging above and beyond the odds for a car sold here which was exported to America and sold for way less there? How can this be?

From the current Holden range, how many cars are actually made in Australia? How many are imported?

How can a country who produces and exports vast quantities or iron ore, coking coal and has some of the biggest deposits of shale oil and natural gas reserves not be competitive in the car manufacturing game? Was it the lack of investment in new technologies? Why have Toyota and all the others been doing extremely well but Holden and Ford not so well? How can it not be viable for Holden to manufacture in Australia? The sums just don't add up. As Asia opens up and major economic reforms start to take shape, they will also face increased pressure from skilled labourers for better pay. What then? Any word where the Commodore is due to be built beyond 2017?

When the going got tough they just asked for a hand out, again, but that all changed with the new government. Americans are ruthless in general, so this decision in business should be no surprise to anyone.

[satansLBO]

Zvonko is right, you have to look what business partnerships are taking place on the world stage.

For example, Just before the WFC, Audi went in a 50/50 business deal Chinese Goverment to supply 100% Chinese made A4s and A6s, for the entire Goverment fleet, I went to beijing in 2010 and saw an Audi dealership where there was a one hectare car park full of black A4 snd A6 sedans, government cars only. While GM and the whole Detroit industry was crumbling in a matter of one year. I don't know if its related but to me it seems if the Australian government don't want to take ownership of the business, all Australian car manufacturing is doomed. With the cost of manufacturing here in Australia, as opposed to our neighbouring countries, Holden and ford will struggle to be competitive. GM and ford will shift manufacturing to areas that enable them to produce a product that meets future demand.

While Audi and VW seem to have strength and scope with highly efficient small diesel and petrol engines throughout Europe Asia USA and Australia, I feel that GM and Fords direction will be the same in manufacturing cheaper smaller cars, hence the wind up of commodore and falcon.

[EVLRB30]

Originally Posted by Boyracer

Maybe they could rationalize the management structure with a manager and admin for every five dealerships instead of every dealership?
Selling V8s to families in 2014 was never going to be easy, the brand deserves to be saved.
I thought Aussies never quit?

That's not directly involved with gm, the dealers employ the managers themselves, it's not a management issue at all it's the cost involved with Australian manufacturing, the vf was the second biggest selling car this year behind the mazda 3

[zvonko]

Originally Posted by satansLBO

Zvonko is right, you have to look what business partnerships are taking place on the world stage.

For example, Just before the WFC, Audi went in a 50/50 business deal Chinese Goverment to supply 100% Chinese made A4s and A6s, for the entire Goverment fleet, I went to beijing in 2010 and saw an Audi dealership where there was a one hectare car park full of black A4 snd A6 sedans, government cars only. While GM and the whole Detroit industry was crumbling in a matter of one year. I don't know if its related but to me it seems if the Australian government don't want to take ownership of the business, all Australian car manufacturing is doomed. With the cost of manufacturing here in Australia, as opposed to our neighbouring countries, Holden and ford will struggle to be competitive. GM and ford will shift manufacturing to areas that enable them to produce a product that meets future demand.

While Audi and VW seem to have strength and scope with highly efficient small diesel and petrol engines throughout Europe Asia USA and Australia, I feel that GM and Fords direction will be the same in manufacturing cheaper smaller cars, hence the wind up of commodore and falcon.

I agree with part of what you have said but disagree with the second part.

German and Italian car manufacturers pay their workers much more than we do here yet their yearly sales targets have been exceeded. Why? Because they constantly invest in new technologies to make it efficient for them to run, they are always leaders of the pack and will continue to do so despite being expensive.

The fact of the matter is, Holden was producing a car which the Australian public lost passion for (Falcon and Commodore). People are now moving into mid sized, smaller block typed vehicles.

Holden's profits on the other hand were used to pay back the American government after the bailout of GM. Now that GM has paid back the debt, they are just looking at optimizing profits in general. That's why they opted for an American CEO because Americans are great at just cutting things right down.

The government here should only purchase cars manufacturers here. Convert the entire fleet to Toyota's effective immediately.

[satansLBO]

I agree, this i hope will be the new governments policy I hope.

[Bax]

Sorry if my facts are wrong, I'm too lazy to research them myself at the moment and I'm going solely off what I saw on tele last night on the project. God forbid.

The 2012 figure means Holden has lost $730 million over six of the past eight years, and a $202 million profit over the same period.

And

Car maker admits it loses money on locally-made vehicles

Why should a government support this? If a business is taking you need to radically change what you're doing, releasing a new commodore isn't going to change anything. If locally made cars are losing money then it doesn't matter how many cars you make/sell in Australia. The root problem is that it's costing too much to manufacture here.

Yes it absolutely sucks ass that 3000(?) or so employees are going to be made redundant, but it's been a long time in the making, and surely they'd have some prior understanding that if their company is tanking that they're not going to be holding that job forever.

Government made the right decision imo.

[FATPSI]

I'm a panel beater and of the cars we repair maybe 1 in 30 is a commodore or falcon. There are so many options these days, people just don't buy them anymore be it price/quality/looks etc. Days of the family car being a commodore or falcon finished about 10 years ago, I am very surprised they lasted this long

[5spdvl]

Lol @ blaming the managers of dealerships at the demise of Holden.

This has been coming for years. One; wages are huge in Australia and make manufacturing too expensive, and two; Holden have not manufactured a car the general public has been interested in for yeas. The Commodore is awful compared to the small capacity Japanese options regarding the already expensive petrol.

[EVLRB30]

Originally Posted by 5spdvl

Lol @ blaming the managers of dealerships at the demise of Holden.

This has been coming for years. One; wages are huge in Australia and make manufacturing too expensive, and two; Holden have not manufactured a car the general public has been interested in for yeas. The Commodore is awful compared to the small capacity Japanese options regarding the already expensive petrol.

Well said this only effects one car and that's the commodore, everything else is already imported, they will just import the cruze again like they did when they first released it

[NASTY1]

Originally Posted by Boyracer

Asian wages are starting to hurt us but European car companies seem to survive.
Holden is a good brand so you have to ask what are they doing wrong that affects profit?

its partially the whinging ****s that work at holdens.

there never happy.there on good money but still push for 6-7% pay rises.


they cry they don't get enough money.
they cry they don't get a good pay rise.im all for pay rises but you need to be sensible about it to.

what i think to myself is what are these guys gonna do when holdens shuts down and they have built there life styles around there wage at the time?because there not going to get a full time job that comes close to paying the same wage.i think the workers have shot themselves in the foot.......or at least contributed to it.

[tzatziki]

Originally Posted by EVLRB30

Well said this only effects one car and that's the commodore, everything else is already imported, they will just import the cruze again like they did when they first released it

captiva= south korean
barina= south korean
cruze(first generation)=south korean

all re badged as holdens

[ss nut]

If you want holden to survive,Buy Australian made products!Support your car inductry or it will be gone,At the races I see sooo many Holden and Ford supporters,But how many of them own one??You have a world class cars over their,But do not wait till it is too late to realise that.

Cheers Marty

[3lturbo]

Originally Posted by NASTY1

its partially the whinging ****s that work at holdens.

there never happy.there on good money but still push for 6-7% pay rises.


they cry they don't get enough money.
they cry they don't get a good pay rise.im all for pay rises but you need to be sensible about it to.

what i think to myself is what are these guys gonna do when holdens shuts down and they have built there life styles around there wage at the time?because there not going to get a full time job that comes close to paying the same wage.i think the workers have shot themselves in the foot.......or at least contributed to it.

But if an employee knew that the company he was working at (for who knows how many years) was soon to go under, then why not try and take every last cent you can. I don't think the employee's had a hand in their company's short comings, or at least not from a manufacturing point of view anyway, so why should they have to suffer for the companies shortcomings.

It is sad to see what is becoming of our Commodores and Falcons, but I believe part of the problem was from neither company keeping up with the times, unlike other overseas manufacturers do here.

[NASTY1]

Originally Posted by 3lturbo

But if an employee knew that the company he was working at (for who knows how many years) was soon to go under, then why not try and take every last cent you can. I don't think the employee's had a hand in their company's short comings, or at least not from a manufacturing point of view anyway, so why should they have to suffer for the companies shortcomings.

It is sad to see what is becoming of our Commodores and Falcons, but I believe part of the problem was from neither company keeping up with the times, unlike other overseas manufacturers do here.

Guess what!there going to suffer allot more when and if they get a new job and its going to be a $200+ a week pay cut.

whats the average weekly wage in sa $650-$700 and holden employees would be on at least $900 at a bare minimum.there on like $30 an hour not including shift rates etc

---------- Post added 14-12-13 at 09:00 ----------

You cant tell me no employee was not worried about getting the ass?they gave out redundancies a few years ago and cut the days and hours back that was worked p/w

[ss nut]

Originally Posted by NASTY1

Guess what!there going to suffer allot more when and if they get a new job and its going to be a $200+ a week pay cut.

whats the average weekly wage in sa $650-$700 and holden employees would be on at least $900 at a bare minimum.there on like $30 an hour not including shift rates etc

---------- Post added 14-12-13 at 09:00 ----------

You cant tell me no employee was not worried about getting the ass?they gave out redundancies a few years ago and cut the days and hours back that was worked p/w

So you can confirm that All Hoden employees are on a minimum of at least 900(a week)How many hrs for that.Or 30 bucks an hour?.If that is so are you implying that they are ruining the company?

[EvilPet]

A great article from The Age.

Holden: Numbers tell the story for the small fry of General Motors' ecosystem
MARK HAWTHORNE December 14, 2013
Infographic on local car manufacturing
Local vehicle manufacturing.

The story of Holden and its demise needs to be viewed through a global lens if it's to be fully understood.
Malcolm Maiden: The window is closing on Tony Abbott's game plan
Michael West: The wheels started to fall off a long time ago
Toby Hagon: Toyota always aimed to be number one
Debate over the sad demise of Holden this week has been dogged by equal parts myth, spin and subterfuge. Pity, because it was always the numbers that would tell this story in the end.
The big fact of Australia's car industry is this: the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers records the world made 84 million passenger cars last year. Australia's share was 209,730 - less than a quarter of 1 per cent.
Author Gideon Haigh describes it in his book End of the Road?: ''In a global sense, car production in Australia is of a magnitude smaller than a rounding error.''
After a fortnight of background briefing and rumour-mongering by a federal cabinet determined to flush out a decision by General Motors before Christmas, it was those numbers, and a $3750 shortfall on every car the company made here, that played a part in determining the day.
Even more important, however, GM needed to get its house in order on a global scale. That meant fringe outposts of its ''manufacturing ecosystem'', as the company's Harvard Business School-educated executives like to call it, needed to give way.
For GM, Australia is one of those fringe outposts.
In a simplistic sense, the great myths of the history of Australian car manufacturing are that the industry is Australian, and it manufactures.
All three of the country's remaining car makers are foreign-owned, and to an increasing extent assemble global platforms from mainly imported parts.
The current Falcon may be an exception, but when Ford started assembling that car in Australia in 1960, the local company was in fact owned by Ford of Canada, and the car was a rebadged North American model.
Toyota makes almost half the cars in Australia each year, but its Altona plant is one of nine where the Camry is made. The Altona-made Camry is about 70 per cent local content, but almost identical cars are pumped out of factories around the world cheaper than the Australian version.
At Holden, the ''all Aussie'' Commodore contains about 50 per cent local content. The Cruze fares even worse, at 25 per cent, and is basically bolted together in Adelaide from imported parts.
Even that much-loved and jingoistic advertising jingle, ''Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars'' was rebadged from America. The original version, penned by Madison Avenue ad agency Campbell Ewald and released in 1974, went: ''Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.''
It demonstrates how the story of Holden, and its demise as a local car maker, needs to be viewed through a global lens if it is to be understood.
The signposts on the road to Holden's departure have been evident for all to see.
In August, at the direction of Detroit, General Motors Holden general manager Mike Devereux pulled the pin on the Opel brand in Australia, just a year after it was launched in this country.
It was a small but significant decision for the company, and the first domino to fall in a chain of events that would lead to GM's decision to close Holden's factories.
Behind the scenes, GM in Detroit was working on a complete reorganisation of the company's troubled global operations - a restructure that has been unveiled in a flurry of announcements over the past week.
At the same time, Mr Devereux was working on a deal with the federal government, and on October 2 he met with federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill and his Manufacturing Minister Tom Kenyon.
In order to keep making cars at Elizabeth in Adelaide until 2022, GM wanted $80 million a year in addition to $275 million already pledged for seven years by the federal and state governments, and $40 million it was set to receive from the Automotive Transformation Scheme. All up, it would have given Holden $1.1 billion over seven years, or an average of $160 million a year, to remain here.
GM agreed that if it shut Holden before 2023, it would have had to repay the money.
For a new government that had won the federal election on a platform of fiscal prudence, it was big ask.
By the end of the month, it seemed GM's mind was made up. In late October, General Motors made a brief, three-sentence announcement. ''Effective November 1, Mike Devereux, director of GMH, will be taking on the roll of GM CIO vice-president - sales, marketing and aftersales,'' it read. ''Devereux will retain his responsibilities of managing Holden until the end of the year, as a replacement for his position is found.''
Many regarded the transfer of the local boss to Asia as the final straw for Holden in Australia, but not cabinet. Weeks after that announcement, Treasurer Joe Hockey was briefing far and wide that there was no rush for Holden to make a decision. He was telling stakeholders to wait for the results of the Productivity Commission's interim report on the industry.
As Mr Devereux evaluated GM's options in Australia, even bigger moves were taking place on a global scale.
On Monday, the US government's bailout of General Motors finally ended, with the Treasury Department's announcement that it had sold its final GM shares.
For GM, gone at last was the stigma of being known as ''Government Motors'', but it still rankles company management that cross-town rival Ford did not need the same bailout to get through the global financial crisis.
In North America, Ford has picked up market share and now has double the profit margin of GM.
With GM's bailout behind it, on Tuesday chief executive Dan Akerson announced he will depart on January 15, and hand over the reins to Mary Barra, the first woman to lead a major global car company.
Of even more importance to Australia, however, was the announcement of a restructure of GM's operations in Europe and Korea.
In Europe, GM's Opel and Vauxhall brands, despite having 6.8 per cent market share, lost the company $US1.8 billion in 2012.
GM's venture into the EU with its Korean-built Chevrolet cars - to take on Hyundai and Kia - has also been a disaster. Chevrolet might be as American as baseball, hot dogs and apple pie, but in Europe it picked up just more than 1 per cent market share and was losing money.
''Chevy was likely cannibalising Opel's sales and also possibly damaging Opel's brand and pricing,'' International Strategy and Investment analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said. ''Model by model, we found Chevy was effectively selling the same product at a 10-15 per cent discount to Opel.''
The game plan from GM was simple. It would shut down Chevrolet in Europe, and hope to pick up that market share with Opel and Vauxhall.
To put the size and scale of that writeoff in perspective, GM has signed a $US559 million, seven-year deal to put the Chevrolet name on Manchester United's shirt. The first year of that deal - the biggest endorsement in European football - is next season, by which time GM won't actually be selling Chevrolet cars in Europe.
Manchester United announced the deal on a Friday and GM announced the resignation of chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick the following Sunday night. ''Mr Ewanick failed to meet the expectations the company set for its employees,'' was GM's statement.
Aside from one of biggest marketing white elephants in corporate history, GM has been stuck with another issue arising from Chevy's departure from Europe - the latent capacity at the old Daewoo plant in Korea.
Korea built 90 per cent of all the Chevrolets sold in Europe, which accounted for one-fifth of GM's production from that country.
It did not take long for the motor industry's best analysts to see the answer.
''The next logical thing for GM would be to transfer the Chevys produced in South Korea to other markets like Australia if it decides to shut its Holden unit down,'' Shin Chung-kwan of KB Investment & Securities in Seoul said.
While all this was going on in Detroit, Mr Devereux had his own ongoing concerns. The first was a public Productivity Commission hearing in Melbourne, at 8.30am on Tuesday.
The second was a federal government that had decided there was no chance of Holden remaining, and was desperate to get the bad news out.
Tuesday turned out to be the day when GM's worlds in Korea, Europe and Australia would collide.
Mr Devereux could not escape it. He was greeted that morning by a front-page headline in The Age declaring ''D-Day for Holden'', and a story that stated a decision to close down manufacturing in Australia would be made that day.
In the lift up to the Productivity Commission offices, a news screen headline declared: ''Holden wants $150 million to stay.''
The opening questions from the commission's deputy chairman Mike Woods are the only ones that will ever matter: ''I would wish to ask at the outset for the record, has General Motors made a decision regarding the future of its Holden operations in Australia?''
''No decision has been made,'' Mr Devereux replied.
''Thank you. Do you know a time frame for such a decision?'' Mr Woods then asked.
''I wouldn't speculate on it in this forum,'' Mr Devereux said.
For an hour, the Holden boss cooly, calmly and eloquently put forward the same case that he had made to Ian Macfarlane on October 2, and the commissioners made notes.
But after an hour, Mr Devereux had had enough.
''We need a public-private partnership over the long term to be able to be relatively competitive and to have GM be able to do what it wants to do, which is to build where we sell,'' he told the commissioners.
''Now, unless you guys have more questions, I need to move.''
The desire to ''move'' was driven by the time in Detroit, where it was by then approaching 6pm. Mr Devereux had an important call to make.
It is now a matter of record that, while acting prime minister Warren Truss and Treasurer Hockey were ripping the car maker to shreds to ''come clean'' and be ''fair dinkum'' with the Australian people in Parliament, GM's decision was being finalised.
''Either you're here or you're not,'' Mr Hockey bellowed at GM in Parliament. Mr Truss chimed in with: ''They owe it to the workers of General Motors not to go into the Christmas period without making a clear commitment to manufacturing in this country.''
It was a remarkable outburst.
Inside the Holden camp, an insider sent a text message that sounded a death knell for Holden. ''Are you seeing this question time attack on Holden?'' it read. ''Taunting [Holden] to leave. It's extraordinary.''
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten would later ponder if the government had ''bullied, hectored and backgrounded Holden out of this country''.
But at the end of the day, it was more myth, spin and subterfuge.
Over in Korea, Mr Shin Chung-kwan can't see what all the fuss is about.
''GM's decision is to raise the utilisation of large plants - in this case in the EU - to maximise its profitability, and close the smaller ones,'' he said. ''Australia is among the smaller ones.''
The numbers have been run, and the result is Australia no longer fits into GM's ''manufacturing ecosystem''.

[NASTY1]

Originally Posted by ss nut

So you can confirm that All Hoden employees are on a minimum of at least 900(a week)How many hrs for that.Or 30 bucks an hour?.If that is so are you implying that they are ruining the company?

Not emplying a thing.just stating the facts.i think the employees contributed to what's happening but not enough to shut it down.how about going out with a fight?


also on another note long term employees cant say they didn't see it coming.only three years ago holden were hiring people on a one year contract.i nearly left where I am to go there.luckily im on a good wicket.

the writing was on the wall along time ago in my opinion.