Quickstep has announced it has been awarded a grant of $1.76 million from the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund.
The grant which is an Australian Government, Victorian Government and Ford Australia funded initiative will help Quickstep to create a dedicated automotive division, co-located with Deakin University in Geelong, where the company will have 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 Quickstep composite manufacturing system , 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’s 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. This grant will make an important contribution to enable us to build a strong automotive culture and propel Quickstep further into the global automotive market.
Carbon Nexus provides access to industry and a team of researchers who have helped to develop new carbon fibres, reduce production costs and speed up manufacturing processes, and we will benefit from their expertise as we improve our volume production capacity.