The Toyota Australia Altona Plant was a

Toyota Australia Toyota Australia is an Australian subsidiary of the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. It markets Toyota products and manages motorsport, advertising and business operations for Toyota in Australia. It is also responsible for Lexus vehicles in A ...

manufacturing facility in the

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

suburb of

Altona North Altona North is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City of Hobsons Bay Local government areas of Victoria, local government ar ...

History

The Toyota Australia Altona Plant opened in 1978, as

Toyota is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

's first engine plant outside of Japan. Panel production began in 1983, before full vehicle production commenced in July 1994 with manufacture of the Corolla transferred from

Port Melbourne Port Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of the Melbourne central business district, located within the Cities of City of Melbourne, Melbourne and City of Port Phillip, Port Phillip Local government ...

followed in January 1995 by the

Camry The Toyota Camry (; Japanese: トヨタ・カムリ ''Toyota Kamuri'') is an automobile sold internationally by the Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota since 1982, spanning multiple generations. Originally compact in size (narrow-body), the Cam ...

. The expanded plant built by John Holland was opened by Prime Minister

Paul Keating Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is an Australian former politician and trade unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996. He held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP), having previously ser ...

. Altona also manufactured the

badge engineered In the automotive industry, rebadging (also known as badge engineering, an intentionally ironic misnomer in that little or no actual engineering takes place) is a form of market segmentation used by automobile manufacturers around the world. T ...

Holden Apollo and Holden Novas. It exported cars to Brunei, Kuwait, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.Toyota Australia exports one-millionth car to Middle East
''Drive'' 26 September 2013 In August 2012, Altona competed its one millionth vehicle for export. In February 2014 Toyota announced the plant would close after it decided it would cease production in Australia. This occurred in October 2017. The site was redeveloped with the former manufacturing building converted into a redevelopment facility which included vehicle design and testing studios, training rooms, a mock sales dealership, auditorium and 400 person bistro. In 2024 Toyota began assembling and distributing stationary

hydrogen fuel cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most batteries in requ ...

power generators at Altona.Toyota to assemble and distribute stationary hydrogen fuel cell power generators GEH2 in Australia

19 October 2023

References

{{Toyota Manufacturing plants in Melbourne Motor vehicle assembly plants in Australia Toyota factories 1978 establishments in Australia 2017 disestablishments in Australia