Nissan to invest in Victorian castings factory, make 41 new hires






Nissan Casting Australia is making a $15.5 million investment in its Dandenong South aluminium casting facility, which exports vehicle components around the world, assisted by an unspecified amount of support from the Victorian government.

“We are delighted to receive strong support to continue to expand our Australian manufacturing expertise,” said Peter Jones, Nissan Casting Australia Plant (NCAP) Managing Director, in a statement.  

“With nearly 40 years of operations in Melbourne’s south-east, this will help us to expand our production of Australian-made electric vehicle components to the global market.” 

According to a statement from the Victorian government, the expansion would result in 41 new jobs in engineering, management and production, and boost automation and robotics at the factory. 

“Nissan Casting’s expansion cements Dandenong’s reputation as an advanced manufacturing hub, bringing more highly skilled jobs to the region,” added Dandenong MP Gabrielle Williams.

Nissan began assembling cars in Sydney in 1966, then moved to higher-volume production at Clayton, Melbourne in in 1972. Its Australian car-making ended two decades later.

NCAP has been open since 1982. Its work on aluminium die-cast components features in the successful Nissan Leaf EV, which passed 500,000 sales last September following release in 2010.  

It exports to car assembly and powertrain plants over the world. As well as the Leaf, it produces for Nissan Navara, Leaf, Qashqai, Pathfinder and X-Trail vehicles.

According to the company’s website, the factory runs 24/7, and makes 2.6 million castings and over 16,000 tow bars a year, worth $82.5 million in export revenues.

The Dandenong South factory is equipped with “four melting furnaces, comprising two tower furnaces and two reverberatory furnaces. In addition, there are 13 die-casting machines, comprising five 800 t units, four 1250 t units, two 2250 t units, and two 2500 t units,” recent feature in Engineers Australia’s magazine, create. 

“The plant also uses a total of 55 robots, comprising 34 ABB and 21 Fanuc industrial robots. Finally, there are 34 machining centres, comprising 22 horizontal and 12 vertical DMG Mori Seiki machines.”

Picture: The Nissan Casting Australia Plant’s 1200 t die-casting machine line (via https://createdigital.org.au/nissan-australia-factory-supplies-automotive-components-around-the-world)

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