After 54 years of manufacturing in Australia, Toyota has officially ended production with the closure of their Altona plant near Melbourne.
Approximately 3,000 people attended a ceremony at the plant to mark the occasion, including current and former employees and officials from Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.
As manufacturing comes to an end, the number of Toyota employees will reduce from 3,900 people to approximately 1,300. The head office will continue to be based in Port Melbourne and most of the Altona manufacturing site will be re-established as a training and product development facility.
The closure follows in the steps of Ford who ended Australian production in October last year. Holden will close their final production facility on October 20.
Australia was the first country outside Japan to produce Toyota cars, starting with the Tiara in 1963 at a factory in Port Melbourne, now the site of the company's corporate headquarters
The Alto plan was opened in July 1994 and built Corolla, Camry and Aurion models.
Parade of Aussie-built Toyota models. Photo / Toyota Australia
The Camry and Aurion was by far the most successful model produced in Australia. Total production to October 3, 2017 was 2,117,808 vehicles, plus 50,296 hybrid variants that were built from 2009, totaling 2,168,104.
Toyota was the only vehicle manufacture to build hybrid cars in Australia.
Production the Aurion ended in August, and the last Camry Hybrid was built in late September.
In 54 years of production, Toyota Australia built 3,451,115 vehicles.