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than the manufacturer can do internally. We could reduce a timescale from years to months, and a cost of $ 100 million to a fraction of that.”
Ryan stresses that Walkinshaw is not an‘ aftermarket business’.“ We do have a small aftermarket division, but in terms of our main business, all our programs are very close OEM partnerships.” One of the main areas of leadership for Walkinshaw is in leftto-right-hand drive conversion, where it has partnerships with General Motors, Toyota and Ateco, the distributor for RAM trucks.
“ A slightly smaller, but still very important division for us is our‘ upfitting’ segment,” adds Ryan.“ That provides upfitter work for automotive manufacturers such as Isuzu, Volkswagen and recently Mitsubishi as well. This is like what we traditionally did with General Motors Holden, so it’ s a nod back to the traditional side of the business and where we started.”
Consolidation
As Walkinshaw continued to expand its offering, it faced a new challenge.“ Looking back a couple of years, we were operating from 13 different sites and the inefficiency of that is obviously massive,” says Ryan. The answer was a bold move- a brandnew headquarters, covering 115,000 square meters. Located in South Dandenong, this state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility is one of the top five manufacturing facilities in Australia and opened its doors in November 2025.“ We felt it was important to bring everything under one roof and benefit from the synergies across the different brands that we work on,” Ryan explains.“ This ensures that we can continue adding value and developing the engineering side of the business, to keep up with the increasing complexity of the vehicles, as the market matures. The new facility will also deliver efficiency gains and cost reduction benefits for our clients.”
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