Wheel firm ‘seeks $50m, planning 200 extra jobs’

“Terrific“ demand could create 200 new jobs at a Geelong firm manufacting high-tech carbon-fibre wheels, according to its chief executive officer.
Waurn Ponds-based Carbon Revolution announced this week that it planned to raise $50 million and triple its staff to 300.
“We’re in mass production and the demand has been terrific,” company chief Jake Dingle Dingle told Tuesday’s Australian Financial Review.
The expansion would help lift production to between 100,000 and 200,000 carbon wheels a year by 2021, he said.
Mr Dingle said larger contracts were in the pipeline as Ford and other makers eyed the company’s wheels for lower-priced, larger-volume vehicles.
Carbon fibre wheels also offered significant fuel savings for the aerospace, defence and trucking industries, he said.
But an expensive production process was a difficulty for carbon-fibre wheels, Mr Dingle said.
“We have halved our costs over the past two years and we’ll be dramatically reducing costs in the next three to five years.“
Mr Dingle said the company could reduce its direct costs by 30 to 35 per cent a year until 2019.
The company expects its expansion plans to result in a public float in 2018.
The company sells wheels into vehicle aftermarkets for auto companies including Porsche, Lamborghini, McLaren, BMW and Audi.
Carbon Revolution has also won deals to produce wheels for the aerospace industry and for Ford’s Shelby Mustang GT350R.
The announcement comes a fortnight before the scheduled shut down of Geelong’s Ford manufacturing plant on 7 October.
Carbon Revolution already employs a number of former Ford and Alcoa staff.
The company has received a number of federal and state funding grants since its inception in 2004.