As part of a continuing investment in Australian innovation and expertise, Toyota Australia has commissioned a state-of-the-art Product Centre at its Centre of Excellence (CoE) facility in Altona, Victoria.
The new Product Centre, according to Toyota, brings together all of the company’s local planning, design, engineering and evaluation teams in the same facility, ensuring the world-class Australian teams will continue to design and develop unique products for the Australian and global markets.
These teams were reportedly behind such models as the HiLux Rugged X and HiLux Rogue.
Toyota Australia Vice President Product, Guest and Aftersales Operations Mike Rausa said the new facility would give the product design, engineering and evaluation teams even more opportunities to create exciting products.
“We’ve already seen what our planning and development teams are capable of, with vehicles like the HiLux Rugged X and HiLux Rogue proving to be popular here in Australia and creating accessories that are adopted in markets around the world,” said Rausa.
“We wanted to retain and build on the capability developed during our long history of vehicle manufacturing, providing a highly collaborative environment that would allow Australian design and engineering expertise and know-how to be utilised within the broad Toyota family.
“The new Product Centre delivers just that, keeping jobs, skills and career paths grounded in Australia and allowing for an unmatched level of collaboration across departments.”
Located at the sprawling 22-hectare CoE, the Product Centre is housed inside the former powertrain manufacturing building that produced over 2.5 million Toyota engines from 1978 to 2017.
Toyota has reportedly invested about $40 million in the construction of the Product Centre, forming part of the $150m overall investment in the CoE.