Toyota axes 350 workers

In the same week that Toyota is trumpeting a new local flagship, the Aurion V6, redundancies are being handed to workers at the company's factory at Altona in Melbourne.

The two-day process involves forced exits under a plan announced in January, when Toyota admitted it needed to cut output because of falling demand from the Middle East.

She reveals that more than 80 workers volunteered to be included in the redundancy program but will not confirm the number whose offer was accepted, as the job cuts are based on a range of selection criteria agreed with unions and including behaviour, skills and experience. Ironically, the redundancies come at a time when local sales of Altona-built cars are improving.

Deliveries of the four-cylinder Camry are up by 22.8 per cent through the first quarter of the year, thanks to an all-new model, and the upturn is expected to continue once the Aurion V6 and Camry Hybrid make it to showrooms over the next three months.

But even the big jump in Camry demand only translates to 5193 sales so far this year, compared with 4229 in the same three months of 2011. That is not nearly enough to protect employment because Toyota Australia's local production plan was always based on a two thirds-one third split between local and foreign sales, with the majority of cars heading to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular.

The export record of 101,668 cars was set in 2008 and the GFC has torn a massive hole in demand since then, with sales dropping to only 59,943 last year as the strength of the Australia dollar also impacts on pricing and demand overseas. As yet, there is no prospect of any significant improvement in demand, even though the Camry was the best selling car in the Middle East in the past.

That leaves Toyota Australia forecasting production of only 95,000 cars this year, up by 1000 over last year but still massively short of the high-water mark of 149,000 set in 2007.