ADI announced today that 95 people would be retrenched from its Bendigo heavy engineering and vehicle design and production facility.
Mr Jean-Georges Malcor, ADI managing director, said he regretted the need to retrench skilled and capable employees but it was necessary to maintain the viability of the Bendigo facility in the depressed market for heavy engineering services.
"We will provide outplacement and support services for the employees made redundant," Mr Malcor said. "ADI's Bendigo management team has been focussed over the last six months on minimising the number of necessary retrenchments," he said.
The retrenchment of blue and white collar workers will take effect four weeks from today. The current size of the Bendigo facility workforce is 282 people.
"ADI remains committed to developing a sustainable business at Bendigo. We are also committed to retaining apprenticeship training at Bendigo because we recognise the importance to ADI and the region of renewing the core skills base.
"The Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicle project is set to be an important source of work for us. Subject to the positive outcome of ongoing reliability testing of the Bushmaster we expect to commence production for the Australian Defence Force in mid 2003 with full production to start in 2004.
"On the new business front, we were delighted by the decision by the US Army last December to purchase our Bendigo designed and produced high mobility engineering vehicles", he said.
Twenty seven HMEVs have already been supplied by ADI to the Australian Defence Force.
