The ripple effect from Holden's closure is set to spread far wider than just the car maker and its component suppliers.
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
In Adelaide's northern suburbs, Holden is the mainstay of hundreds of businesses - from shops to factories - that directly and indirectly rely on it as an economic and social cornerstone.
The assembly plant's closure in 2017 has businesses scrambling to diversify in a bid to survive.
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A cascade of molten metal is poured into a hopper at a foundry at Wingfield in Adelaide's north.
Intercast & Forge relies on Holden - amongst Australia's biggest producer of scrap metal - for 85 per cent of its smelting material.
Each year 25,000 tonnes of scrap is trucked in from the Holden plant to be melted down for other uses.
General Manager Brett Lawrence says Holden's closure has the potential to hit the foundry hard.
"Fairly dire - because we have got a material we can't pour metal and that's the basis of our production - if we don't have scrap or an alternative we don't survive."
Mr Lawrence says 70 per cent of the recycled product is exported.
But the company may have to turn the tables from export to import, if it's unable to source sufficient scrap metal domestically.
Mr Lawrence says Intercast and Forge is working on contingency plans in a bid to insulate itself from the worst when Holden winds up in 2017.
"The absolute worst case, we can't get the material locally, it would mean we have to import which increases the costs even more, so we would be talking about different work arrangements, potentially some loss of work, but at this stage we're relatively confident that we'll be able to get material, it'll just be at a higher cost."
The foundry began operating in 1945, three years before Holden's first car rolled off the assembly line.
For a few decades it was a supplier of cast components to the automotive sector, but over time has become a net receiver of the sector's scrap.
Today it employs 204 people, including John Cooper.
"It'd be a devastating blow, to see a lot of the blokes if we have to lose half our workforce or anything like that, everyone wants everything to go on like it was."
John Cooper has worked at the foundry for 30 years, and understands the dynamics between the challenges facing the business and the effect it's having on workers.
"The mood is probably a little bit unsettled and unsure, but we've had some rough times in the past and we have a fair bit of confidence in our management. But I mean management have got enough things to deal with, with overseas competition without having to worry now about the price of our scrap metal and that sort of thing going up. So our security probably is a little bit more of a worry than what it used to be. "
The foundry is one of many businesses, from transport companies to corner shops, confronted with the bleak prospect of dwindling turnover, shrinking profits, staff cuts or possible closure as a result of Holden's demise.
Manufacturing industry analyst John Spoehr says it's bad news for Adelaide's north.
"The northern suburbs of Adelaide are among the most disadvantaged parts of Australia. The northern suburbs have the highest suburban unemployment rates in the country next to some in Victoria so it's starting from a really difficult base so this will be an added shock which is going to drive unemployment and youth unemployment up."
With the region's mainstream unemployment around 14 per cent and youth unemployment closer to 40 per cent, Adelaide University Demographer Graeme Hugo says the closure presents a massive social challenge.
Professor Hugo says governments must act swiftly to avert an economic and social disaster.
"What I would like to see is a taskforce, a special effort made with very, very significant resources to do the hard yards in terms of retraining people and creating the opportunities for them."
The South Australian and Victorian premiers have already presented the federal government with a priority list of infrastructure projects they believe will assist their states to transition through the loss of Holden.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his government will work hard to help workers go from good jobs, to better jobs.
However Adelaide University Professor of politics Clem Macintyre says many people blame the Abbott government's refusal to boost investment in the industry, and that could harm the Liberal's chances at the impending state election.
"Ultimately the decision not to back General Motors Holden with additional large subsidies is a decision made at the federal level and so clearly the consequences will fall there. But at the same time the next election in South Australia is just 3 months away and the hurt will be very strong in three months and it may be that voters are looking to kick the first head that they see."
John Spoehr says the impact of Holden's closure will extend beyond Adelaide's northern suburbs and the raft of marginal seats pivotal to the outcome of the March poll.
He estimates the flow-on effects could cost around 65,000 jobs nationally, at a time when manufacturing jobs are already scarce.
"2017 doesn't seem that far away but it takes decades to develop new industries and we've seen 30,000 jobs lost in manufacturing here in South Australia and 100,000 jobs in manufacturing nationally so the labour market for people who are working in manufacturing is very poor."
Brett Lawrence says the outlook for people who do lose their jobs is grim.
"I don't know how the number of employees that we're talking about losing their jobs can be trained, because where are they going to go? What are they going to be trained it? It's absolutely dramatic and I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense to me as to why we would allow that to occur. "
The foundry boss believes the car industry has been the incubator for engineering and technical skills and fears the sector's collapse augurs badly for the future.
"There's a certain concept that really if you want to be in it and you want to be a smart nation you need to be generating engineers and whatever. Mining is not a large employer in terms of manufacturing, so the manufacturing game is very tough, it has been for quite a number of years but this is the last straw I think."
John Spoehr calculates the Holden closure will cost South Australia alone $1.5 billion a year.
He says the national cost will be many times that.
"It's incredibly difficult. You can't create industries overnight. You won't be able to solve this problem simply by buying in the industries - they're not going to come with the high Australian dollar and the difficult economic conditions we're facing. So there's going to have to be substantial investment in new infrastructure projects short term to generate enough jobs for the people who are going to lose their jobs over the medium term. The cost of assistance is going to be more than the cost of investing in Holden, unfortunately."
