√Former Holden factory to be reborn as a mushroom farm – report
The factory which produced millions of Holdens for more than 50 years will be used to grow mushrooms, with annual production forecast to net 20,000 tonnes of the edible fungus.
The Holden factory which built some of Australia’s best-selling cars has found a new local owner, announcing its plans to turn the site into a mushroom farm.
Adelaide Now reports the former home of the Holden Commodore – in the suburb of Elizabeth, on the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia – has been purchased by Epicurean Food Group (EFG), which is currently renovating the factory with plans to grow more than 20,000 tonnes of mushrooms at the facility each year.
EFG’s CEO Kenneth King told Adelaide Now the former Holden factory will be used to grow a wide variety of mushrooms – including oyster, shiitake, enoki, king oyster and lion’s mane varieties – as well as processing and cooking the edible fungus into pre-packaged mushroom burgers, mushroom balls and sausages.
The executive told Adelaide Now the site will be the only mushroom factory in Australia that “manages the whole cycle from the curation of mushroom cultures in a lab, to the growing and distribution of fresh produce using regenerative farming practices, to the processing and production of mushroom products in a hi-tech commercial kitchen.”
The executive told Adelaide Now the company aims to increase its workforce from the current 31 full-time employees and 60 contractors to 350 staff, with an eventual goal of expanding the facility to 35,000 square metres.
This compares to approximately 5000 Holden workers at its peak, and 2000 employees on the site in the years leading up to the closure.
It is not clear whether the rest of the site will be turned into a business precinct, as was the plan announced by the Pelligra Group after the factory closed in 2017.
Holden’s factory was the last local car manufacturing facility to close in Australia, shutting its doors on 20 October 2017 after a red Commodore SS-V Redline sedan rolled off the production line (pictured below).
Opened in 1958 as a body assembly factory, the Holden factory in Elizabeth, South Australia started full vehicle production with the ‘EH’ in 1965, which was followed by the Statesman in 1971.
When the Holden Commodore launched in 1979, the Elizabeth factory became one of the two sites – alongside Dandenong, Victoria – to build what would become the car-maker’s most successful model. When the Dandenong plant closed in 1989, Elizabeth became the Commodore’s only home.
The Elizabeth site was split in 2011 to accommodate local production of the Holden Cruze, which lasted until 2016 – just one year before the car-maker stopped building cars in Australia.
In February 2020, little more than two years after Holden closed the Elizabeth factory, General Motors announced it would pull out of right-hand drive markets globally, wrapping up the brand on 1 January 2021.
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