Quickstep to create automotive division in Geelong
Quickstep Holdings Limited has been awarded a grant of $1.76 million from the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund (GRIIF).
The grant will assist Quickstep to establish a dedicated automotive division, co-located with Deakin University at their Waurn Ponds campus, Geelong, where the company will benefit from access to composite research and automotive specialists from Deakin and the wider Geelong community.
Quickstep will establish a new facility to design and develop Automotive manufacturing cells which will incorporate the innovative Quickstep Process, which uses liquids to cure components, and the Quickstep resin spray transfer (RST) system.
The facility will also enable the production of customer prototypes and initial production quantities.
Total project expenditure is anticipated to be $5.6 million from now to June 2017 and will create 30 new jobs.
Quickstep Executive Chairman, Tony Quick, said: "Having collaborated with Deakin University for over a decade this activity is a key step in our growing relationship. We are capitalising on Deakin’s knowledge of Quickstep and the area's wealth of automotive skills to create a new automotive division associated with the Carbon Nexus facility.”
The project complements the creation of a carbon fibre composite cluster with Carbon Nexus and Deakin University, which has a significant involvement in composite research. The cluster will be one of only two independent carbon fibre research centres in the world.
Deakin University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Lee Astheimer, said: “We welcome this strong support for Quickstep, a company we are proud to have a long term partnership with. Deakin has established Carbon Nexus, our open access pilot carbon fibre manufacturing line and research facility, with the aim of developing exactly this kind of working relationship with companies like Quickstep to help create the jobs of the future, for Geelong and Australia. Today’s announcement clearly demonstrates the power that such a world class carbon fibre manufacturing research facility has on driving new industry development.”
