MotorOne Group has been rolled into a new entity which values the company at $450 million. 

The move into major body repairs, which has been underway for about 12 months, is using the gold standard in the latest vehicle repair equipment and workflow techniques to gain its competitive advantage in the sector.

The major expansion program is seen as a natural progression for the MotorOne product portfolio and a growth opportunity in its business plan.

MotorOne is the ‘household name’ within dealerships for the sale of aftermarket car protection products including exterior ceramic paint protection, interior upholstery protection, window tinting, parking sensors and dash cameras; all of which are designed to maintain owner pride in, or protection of, their vehicles.

Then comes scratch-and-dent repairs delivered from 85 vans from which mobile technicians repair minor knocks under a membership program at low prices that regular panel beaters are unable to match.

These are MotorOne Group’s core businesses and it is off the back of these operations that MotorOne Group has the personnel and workflow expertise to roll out its operations into major crash repairs for insurers.

Each of the planned MotorOne Autobody centres will be capable of a throughput of between 50 and 120 cars a week from premises ranging in size from 2500 square metres to 4500 square metres. Staffing levels at MotorOne Group are expected to increase by 2000 people from the 850 people at present.

The CEO of MotorOne Group, Greg Lewis, told GoAutoNews Premium that the basis of the business will be alignment with insurance companies.

He said MotorOne Autobody has agreements with a number of major insurers including RACQ and IAG. IAG operates the NRMA (NSW) and RACV (Victoria) insurance businesses and includes Coles Insurance as well as white label branded insurance products for other businesses.

“We will also do some work for Suncorp and Youi Insurance,” he said.

Greg Lewis

Mr Lewis said the company has opened 15 major repair shops to date along the eastern seaboard of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane”.

“Currently, we have another three shops in line for acquisition and we also have three green field sites being built,” he said.

In Victoria, MotorOne Autobody covers the Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas and the Western District with operations in North Geelong (opening soon) and South Geelong and Dandenong South (both of which are open).

“Dandenong South has been open for three months and we have another couple either in acquisition or being built in the southeast suburbs of Melbourne as well. We have just opened our first shop in Thomastown in the north.

“We bought a site in Maidstone that was an existing large panel shop that had been put into hibernation. We also opened up a two-hectare site in Melton and we have started to build a greenfield operation in Wantirna,” Mr Lewis said. 

MotorOne Autobody has two stores in Brisbane at Acacia Ridge and Brendale and one on the Sunshine Coast at Warana. It has plans for another two north of Brisbane and is in the process of moving down to the south of Brisbane as well.

The coverage in Sydney is heavily biassed towards the west at this stage with sites at Silverwater, Bankstown, Jamisontown and a build underway in Eastern Creek.

Mr Lewis said that the industry presented an opportunity for growth because auto body repairs have become highly sophisticated and technically demanding. 

Vehicle bodies are increasingly using lightweight steels, alloys and composites as well as high grade paints all requiring special skills and equipment. Insurers also want IT integration with their repairers and the IT demands of the industry mean repairers now have to get on top of cyber security as well.

Repairs also increasingly involve the replacement of expensive highly technical sensors, cameras and safety devices that are damaged in accidents. 

Mr Lewis said that, as one of the most recent players in the industry, MotorOne Autobody was using the latest and most sophisticated body repair equipment and production workflow techniques in Australia.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult for smaller individual repair shops to keep up with the changes,” he said.

“We are reasonably new players. But being a new player, and seeing what’s happened in the market through consolidation, we have seen mistakes made and we can avoid replicating those mistakes. 

“We are working on building a sustainable business with the right partnerships with insurers and we need to be profitable along the way, as well.

“So basically, it’s going to be an insurance partnership-driven business.

“We are bringing with us our experience of partnering with motor car dealers and manufacturers. We are taking that whole philosophy to dealing with insurers; that is we want to be a partner-of-choice; the preferred partner of an insurer.

“An insurer wants to make sure that the quality of the work coming out to their customer is the best it can be and by having the latest equipment and attracting good quality people we will be the repairer of choice.” 

Mr Lewis said the MotorOne Group had an advantage in the auto repair business because “we’re not a one trick pony”. 

“We have a really resilient business in our car care business, in our films division and in our small accident repair division.

“Our diversification means we are not reliant on one division of our business. I think that has allowed us to have a different view in the world of auto body repair. We just don’t want to take on work for the sake of taking work and doing jobs for the sake of doing jobs. 

“We want to be able to make sure that we partner with the right insurer, where we can do quality work for them and meet the requirements of our partners on things like IT systems integration. 

“Our mantra is full productivity all the time. We flow the cars through, so that the vehicle has very little downtime as it goes through each stage of the repair process from assessment to delivery back to the customer,” Mr Lewis said. 

Quadrant involvement in MotorOne Group

Quadrant acquired MotorOne in August 2016 and partnered with management to invest in growth opportunities during the years prior to COVID. 

Mr Lewis said that during the pandemic “our business was quite fortunate because it is extremely resilient. We have several different pillars to the business. The business remained strong and we were lucky enough that we retained full employment during the pandemic”.

During the pandemic MotorOne commenced its planned expansion into motor body repairs. “We opened our first MotorOne Autobody store in Queensland in Brendale and that was a great success. We won a contract with RACQ there and also began expanding in Victoria. 

“Quadrant saw that there was a lot of momentum and growth opportunity in the auto body space, an area of the business that we had not been in before. 

“As a result, Quadrant has backed the plan to grow in auto body smash repairs and grow earnings to about $70 million a year. 

“Quadrant wants to take the opportunity to help us to grow the business over the next three or four years.”

Under the new funding arrangement, Quadrant Private Equity raised $255 million from investors including the Australian Government’s Future Fund and ROC Partners as well as a number of high-net-worth individual investors.

It has created a new single asset fund to buy and own MotorOne. Quadrant will manage the fund on behalf of investors.  

Mr Lewis will continue to run the business with existing management. The COO of MotorOne Autobody is Nick Gillies who has a corporate team of about 25 people based at head office in Melbourne.

By John Mellor