AUSTRALIA’S leading vehicle transport and logistics company, Autocare Services, has continued its east coast rollout of new or expanded facilities with the completion of a 15,000-vehicle storage and processing area at Kembla Grange near Wollongong.

The development is the culmination of a move of the vehicle import to Port Kembla about a decade ago and follows the release of industrial land that accompanied the winding down of the One Steel pipe and tube manufacturing operations.

Autocare has invested a significant amount in the consolidation of its facilities at Reddalls Road, Kembla Grange, which has seen four separate but adjacent brownfield landholdings totalling 34 hectares joined by roads and bridges.

The work undertaken by Autocare has been to link the facilities together. Where there were four sites there are now effectively two sites. This has been designed to improve the flow of trucks into and out of the facility and improve vehicle storage efficiency.

The land at Kembla Grange can accommodate 15,000 vehicles. There is an additional vehicle capacity of 2500 vehicles at Port Kembla where the vehicles are offloaded from a stream of car carriers before moving on to Kembla Grange. Kembla Grange is a little over 8km from the port.

Sam Boardman, general manager of transport at Autocare Services, told GoAutoNews Premium that the investment at Autocare’s Kembla Grange facility has resulted in a significant increase in hail mesh coverage, improved logistical flows of vehicles and more efficient servicing of customers and the dealer network.

The One Steel pipe facilities, originally owned by BHP and then floated off into Arrium, were at the epicentre of the Port Kembla/Greater Wollongong area. The land fell into disuse as the manufacturing industry slowed down and then finally closed down in 2017.

Mr Boardman said: “When we first moved to Kembla Grange more than six years ago, we invested in land that could hold about 4000 vehicles. The additional brownfield sites were adjacent to that land.

“So we have repurposed these brownfield sites into car storage. In 2016 and 2017 we completed a significant investment into the development at two of those sites and as of January 2020 will have finalised the redevelopment of the other two brownfield sites that we are operating in Kembla Grange.

“This has resulted in improvements in actual storage facilities but also a significant improvement in warehousing and technology to improve our efficiency across those sites by about 15 per cent and 20 per cent respectively in terms of truck movements to and from the site.

“So, in terms of repurposing from manufacturing into car storage, transport and logistics, we have also provided about 45 ongoing local jobs on those sites which provide new-vehicle car distribution, storage and processing from the Illawarra region.

“A capacity of 15,000 vehicles gives people an idea of what we are doing for the local economy in terms of jobs and the additional business we bring into the Illawarra.”

Mr Boardman said the flow-on effects to those companies supporting the wider Autocare operations were finding their way into the local Illawarra economy.

“The transformation from manufacturing in the area to what we have today has been a long haul but has been really successful,” he said.

By John Mellor