WAU will shift from its current base in Clayton South to a 100,000 square metre Walkinshaw Group facility that is almost complete in Dandenong South.
Walkinshaw, who says the cost of the build project comes in at over $100 million, recently visited the site that is only weeks away from handover.
It will house the Walkinshaw Group’s automotive production facilities, engineering and design studio, corporate offices and, eventually, the Supercars team.
“It’s a purpose-built facility purely for Walkinshaw Group,” Walkinshaw explained on the Rusty’s Garage podcast.
“It will house between six and eight production lines for different manufacturers. It will house our world-leading engineering and design studios.
“About 100 to 120 engineers working from there, about 1000 to 1400 staff in total at maximum capacity. And the race team will be moving there as well.
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“Everyone’s going to start moving in from the end of August. The keys get handed over end of August, which is really exciting.
“The first production line will move over at the beginning of September, and then we’ll start staggering those in towards the end of the year.
“And then in April is the planned date for the race team to move, and then it will be all full.”
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The April target will allow WAU to get its first Toyota Supras up and running from its current workshop before the shift takes place.
WAU moved into its current home in Clayton South in late 2023, having relocated from its long-time home nearby.
The staggering numbers behind the new facility attest to the fact the race team the Walkinshaw family co-owns is just a small part of the overall group.
Now flushed with engineering contracts including local left-to-right hand drive conversion of several vehicles, Walkinshaw has grown exponentially since the demise of Holden’s local manufacturing killed off Holden Special Vehicles.
“It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened for us,” Walkinshaw said of what appeared at the time as a devastating blow.
“It opened the doors to lots of different manufacturers. It forced us to realise what we were really good at doing.
“[That is] the really, really high-end engineering and design and manufacturing processes for automotive manufacturers and adding value by being able to do niche programs between 1,000 and 10,000 units a year.
“For manufacturers, they were too small in scale to give interest to them, considering the cost they would have to apply to that program.
“But we could do it for much cheaper and do it much faster, and that’s where we’ve discovered we had a lot of value. From there, we’ve just continued to grow.
“So, it’s an exciting project moving into this new site. What I really think the site demonstrates is just how far we’ve come as a business.”
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