HP’s new site in Australia (Credit: News.com.au)
The OEM will move into a site in Felixstow, with 500 staff to relocate.
News.com.au reported on HP’s agreement to move its operations from a site in Lockleys in Australia to Payneham in Felixstow “within six months”, with the new site a former civic centre that has seen a number of tenants and cost local taxpayers millions.
The move to the “long-abandoned” centre will see HP “consolidate its operations” there, with 500 staff relocating to the new site, on which HP has a tenancy agreement until 2025. The site had previously been sold to the local state government in 2001 for AU$2.47 million ($2 million/€1.6 million), who built an AU$20 million ($16.9 million/€13.6 million) office building on the site for financial company JP Morgan, which moved out in 2004 leaving AU$7.7 million ($6.5 million/€5.2 million) of unpaid rent that was recouped through taxation.
Previous tenants Air Warfare Destroyer Systems moved in in 2006 but left in 2011, after which Commercial & General, a property developer, bought the site from the government in 2013. The company’s Managing Director Jamie McClurg confirmed that “work to upgrade and expand the building […] would begin early next year”, with HP set to move in in June 2015. He added that “design work for the interior fit-out was underway and internal walls had already been removed”.
McClurg also pointed out that “there was a lot of work to be done to make the site suitable” for HP, and that this had “delayed the company’s move”, as the OEM was planning to “double the size” of the building “by developing excess land at the site”. He also stated that “it’s anticipated that HP will move into the site in six months once the construction works inside are complete. A fit-out of the building is taking place now and internal bits have already been stripped out. There will be a full new interior for the building to suit modern requirements.
“A great deal of interior design and technology is to be used in this building and staff from a number of locations to be coordinated. These things take time and there is also a great deal of technology to be installed in the building”.