Swanky new digs for Renault Australia

SEVERAL years of sales growth and an imminent range expansion has given Renault some long overdue traction in Australia, and now it has corporate headquarters to match its brighter outlook.

The French company previously occupied a corner of alliance partner Nissan’s head office in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Dandenong, but last week spread its wings and moved to its own dedicated home base in Mulgrave, just down the road from BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Renault Australia managing director Justin Hocevar has had his eye on a move away from Dandenong since joining the company in 2010, and told GoAuto this week the company had simply outgrown its former home.

The new headquarters, he said, would have the added benefit of improving perceptions of the brand – being newer, entirely Renault-branded and much closer to Melbourne – and act as a symbol to the market that the company was here to stay.

With a 750 square-metre floorplan, the modern open-plan office has 65 per cent more space than Renault’s previous headquarters – while a series of empty desks to one side of the office await the new staff the company has said it will recruit over the course of this year.

There is even a left-hand-drive European version of the new-generation Clio Sport and a Lotus Renault Formula One racecar sitting in the glass-fronted foyer – vestiges of last month’s Grand Prix.

A new technical training centre is also being built on an empty plot across the road. It will open inside 18 months and have workshops, capacity for EV battery testing and repair, cleaning bays, a technical workshop and additional parking.

Renault Australia has had to pay for the lease of the new base, and development of the site over the road, from its own pocket, but according to Mr Hocevar, it’s “appropriate for where the brand is at”.

“I think it sends a message to all of our clients, any of our business partners, our dealer network, that Renault is very serious about its position in the Australian market, and now we have a place to call home that is branded as our home.

“Having that bespoke space is important for your corporate presence, corporate pride, the team’s pride, they’re some of the intangibles.”

The company sold a record 5011 units in 2012 (up 38.3 per cent from the previous year), and is up a further 64.3 per cent this year. New arrivals such as the latest-generation Clio range and the Captur small SUV within the next year are odds-on to boost this even further.

The figures are still a ways off where previous management projected they would be when it re-launched here in 2002, but the positive trajectory, said Mr Hocevar, is putting Renault Australia more firmly on the company’s global map.

“I think that unfortunately there were a lot of broken promises previously (at launch), but we’ve had a couple of years now delivering on what we said we’d do, and that’s given head office a lot more confidence, and we’ve also been able to demonstrate to them the opportunity here.

“When you speak to them with the right data and present those opportunities in the right way, they’re prepared to back you. Europe’s still tough, its tough for all brands there, and therefore it does make it somewhat easier for a subsidiary operating in Australia, where currency is favourable.

“We’ve got some good traction with the brand, lots of our products are well received, we have signed some good fleet contracts and we’ve grown our dealer network so all those things have signalled to head office that all the stars have started to align.”

Not everything has shifted across to Mulgrave, however, with the company still piggybacking on the warehousing and distribution power of its partner Nissan, which has a much bigger network Down Under.

“The beauty,” said Mr Hocevar, “is that we still have our business partnership with Nissan as strong as ever, and therefore that gives us real strength.

“Let’s say there are some other importers that are also trying to grow in the market that don’t have that larger group to call upon, and if you think from a national parts warehousing and vehicle distribution point of view, we’ve got a much stronger footprint, we’ve got much stronger bargaining power when it comes to transport contracts or things of that nature.

“Also we’ve got the strength of a big IT department, a big HR department, and even some of the broader functions of finance and accounting.

“There’s a lot of back end support that's provided under a service agreement with Nissan, and we’re able to offer very high service levels because of that.”