Segula chosen for key engineering role ahead of local outfits
The factory-backed conversion of the US-built Ford F-150 pick-up in Melbourne is turning truly multinational with one of France’s biggest engineering company’s intrinsic to the project.
The project backer and manager, Thailand-headquartered RMA Group, has contracted Segula Technologies to do the heavy lifting on the conversion engineering in co-operation with Ford’s Australian product development team.
RMA is managing the project and establishing the assembly line down which the F-150s will roll from mid-2023.
RMA was selected by Ford ahead of a bunch of local bidders for the F-150 project work, including Premcar and Walkinshaw Automotive Group, which already remanufactures the rivals for the F-150, the RAM and Chevrolet Silverado.
“RMA is the entrepreneur, so they are the ones taking on the business and investing in this,” explained Ian Foston, the global chief engineer of the Aussie-developed family of Ford vehicles including the Ranger, Everest and Bronco.
“They have then sub-contracted the engineering work out to Segula. RMA has their own internal capabilities but they just don’t have enough people to do this work.
“They have gone out to Segula to help them with his project.”
Foston confirmed to carsales locally-based product development team would have critical oversight of the F-150 project and it would be their first dealings with Segula.
“We are managing it, it is part of my portfolio,” said Foston.
“Dave Burn, who is my special vehicle engineering chief, is helping mange that program to ensure the conversion engineering is done great.
“The engineering team has the responsibility – working with our F-150 colleagues in the US – to make sure the engineering is conducted and making sure that Segula’s engineering work is genuine Ford and we are happy with the work they have done and we can stand by that and say it’s a genuine Ford conversion and not something that has been hacked apart and reassembled.
“We haven’t used Segula hardly at all in terms of our current work on T6,” Foston added. “We use a lot of Premcar when we overspill in terms of work.”
Former employees of both Premcar and Walkinshaw Automotive Group have joined the project, but based on LinkedIn profiles the vast bulk of Segula’s 100-plus squad of automotive engineering and development staff hired in Australia since mid-2020 are from now defunct Holden.
Some of them have come via the short-lived VinFast local engineering effort.
Ex-Ford manufacturing exec Trevor Negus runs RMA Automotive Australia, the local off-shoot charged with the F-150 project.
His key hires include one of Australia’s best-credentialled manufacturing engineers with a long history at Ford and Ford-related companies such as Tickford Vehicle Engineering, Ford Performance Vehicles and Premcar.
Segula set up in Australia in 2017 and in March 2021 established its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Melbourne. Globally it has 140 offices and 10,000 employees in 30 countries. It has reach into defence, medical, rail and other areas as well as automotive.
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Keyword: French connection for Australia’s Ford F-150