Holden’s manufacturing presence went silent this past October, and the brand announced the former Elizabeth carmaking plant was sold to a Melbourne-based developer, Pelligra Group, last December. The developer has plans for a state-of-the-art business park, but carmaking could return to the site if a British billionaire has his way.
Sanjeev Gupta, a billionaire and head executive at GFG Alliance, has approached General Motors to purchase assets from the former Holden plant in order to build electric cars in South Australia, The Advertiser reported on Sunday. GFG said it intends to “develop the site as a manufacturing base for an electric vehicle, utilizing the innovative i-Stream technology.” i-Stream is a new chassis developed by Gordon Murray, the man behind the iconic McLaren F1.
The architecture uses Formula 1-derived construction to keep a car’s overall weight as low as possible. The overarching key to the chassis is a purpose-built approach with an extremely low parts count. The first car to use i-Stream will be the TVR Griffith.
South Australian treasurer, Tom Koutsantonis, reportedly penned a letter to GM asking for suppport in Gupta’s bid.
“We believe that the GFG Alliance’s plans would put South Australia at the forefront of the inevitable transition of the Australian market to electric vehicles and ask that all due consideration be given to their bid and the potentially significant benefits to the automotive industry and broader community in South Australia,” the letter, in part, read.
Gupta reportedly has big plans to create new manufacturing jobs at the site if the bid goes through, and the local and federal government has allegedly committed to resolving “logistical issues” in the area. The British billionaire has a pretty healthy track record of buying up failing businesses and turning them around; he’s purchased 20 steel, car and engineering plants in Britain.
Such a deal sounds familiar, though. In 2015, a Belgian businessman by the name of Guido Dumarey placed a bid to rescue the Elizabeth assembly plant to continue building cars on GM’s Zeta platform. The bid, ultimately, dissolved months later.
Comments
Before signing anything with Gupta I suggest that due diligence is done to ensure that there are absolutely no links with the Gupta family that have made considerable inroads into South Africa’s government finances in a most unfavorable and influential manner. Claims of bought politicians are rampant.
I can assure you he has no links to that family… and has saved many thousand manufacturing jobs in Britain and Australia over the last few years by recapitalising failing industrial businesses into sustainable enterprises with improved greener credentials.
Thank you for your confirmation. It is a big relief that there are no connections to the Guptas that have created such turmoil in South Africa.
Our governments here down under are not as corrupt as those of Sth. Africa where the president is milking his people and using that money to beef up his palace. But then we have a very busy population who frown on any dealings like that in state or federal parliament. The parliamentary members might get away with it for awhile, but sometimes they suffer at the next election…well we hope so.