Holden Commodore will seed $6b activity

Holden chairman and managing director Mike Devereux said the company was building a world-class car for local and export markets.

"The VF represents a sea-change in terms of the type of vehicle we can create in this country, it's a class above anything that we've ever done or has ever been done in this country, we're very proud that you can export things from Australia - they have to be world-class and this fantastic manufacturing facility and the team that put the VF together have delivered on that," he said.

The car is being unveiled well before it goes on sale in June as the export version - the Chevrolet SS - is being revealed in the US tomorrow.
The export model, which supplies the body aesthetics for the Chevrolet NASCAR competitor, will debut at the upcoming Daytona 500, unveiled by former Holden boss, now GM North America president Mark Reuss.

Mr Devereux has again defended the co-investment strategy with the state and federal governments, which was expected to reap $6 billion of local economic benefit - through component suppliers and down to workers wages - during the life-cycle of the next-generation products out to 2022.

Mr Devereux said the company was conscious of providing value for the governments’ $275 million co-investment package. "It's two billion for VF and four billion for the next-gen models, between 2016 and 2022 in economic activity and injection in the Australian economy, he says.

"The country understands what manufacturing means to the country, we need to fight for our right to be able to have high-tech manufacturing," he says. "We take our taxpayer assistance very seriously and we want to make sure we provided a great return on investment for everybody in the country and we believe we're doing just that," he said.

SA Premier Jay Weatherill believes the $50 million co-investment in Holden's manufacturing future represented value-for-money for tax payers. "We've invested $50 million and it's going to leverage the future of 16,000 jobs in SA, I think on anybody's reckoning that is a great deal for this state - a billion worth of investment through until 2022, that's the agreement that has been reached."