Qantas announces closure of maintenance engineering base at Avalon HUNDREDS of specialised workers are "devastated" at Qantas' decision to close its heavy maintenance facility in Avalon next year. Qantas will look overseas to maintain its remaining fleet of Boeing 747s after announcing the closure of the facility at the end of March 2014. The closure of the Avalon base will affect 53 Qantas employees and 246 contractors with Forstaff Aviation. Domestic chief executive Lyell Strambi said there was not enough work to retain the Avalon base, and the airliner will look offshore to maintain the 14 soon-to-be-retired 747s. "As well as considering existing facilities, we will also examine specialist 747 maintenance providers including Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK and the US," he said. We will continue to do heavy maintenance on around 110 aircraft at our main base in Brisbane. Qantas staff victims of 747 fade-out Following an eight-week review, Mr Strambi said there would have been a 22-month gap with no scheduled maintenance over the next four years. Mr Strambi said it was nonsense to say the closure was part of a long-term plan to shift operations to Asia. "We want to make Brisbane work for us," he said, referring to a $30 million upgrade of the Brisbane facility. Avalon worker Peter Ryan said he was devastated by the news. We'll all struggle to find work here now," Mr Ryan, 49, said. I'm lucky I've worked in other industries but there are a lot of younger blokes who will find it tough. It's not our fault, we've done nothing wrong. After 15 years working at Avalon he said the news was not a surprise but it "still hurt." He believed work would now be sent offshore to Southeast Asia. Victorian secretary of the Australian Workers' Union, Ben Davis said Qantas had "broken the hearts of workers." "This is devastating news in a part of Victoria that can't afford any more bad news," Mr Davis said. This facility didn't have to close and Qantas should be ashamed of themselves. They will offshore this work overseas. He said because employees worked in such a specialised field it would make it near impossible for them to find similar work. Mr Strambi flagged further changes to the Qantas engineering operations, saying modern aircraft needed less maintenance. "Our fleet is now the youngest it has been in two decades and more modern aircraft have up to half the maintenance needs of older ones," Mr Strambi said. This will mean ongoing changes to our engineering operations in order for Qantas to remain competitive. He said Qantas would redeploy the workers it can from Avalon. "Our ability as a business to absorb all of those is negligible," he said. There will be redundancies. One-off costs associated with the closure of the Avalon facility, including redundancies, will be approximately $28 million. The Avalon review follows 263 redundancies at the site announced a year ago and the closure of the Tullamarine heavy maintenance facility, which resulted in the loss of 422 jobs. It's another blow for the struggling Geelong region, following the decision by Ford to close its Geelong plant in 2016 at the cost of 510 jobs; Target slashing about 200 jobs; and Shell flagging the sale of its Geelong refinery, threatening some 450 local jobs. Federal Member for Corio Richard Marles called on the Federal Government to renew its commitment to manufacturing. "This has been a very difficult year for Geelong," Mr Marles said. This is a state-of-the-art facility and it's a crying shame if manufacturing work does not continue here. It is so important that we do not let go of manufacturing in this country and in Geelong. Victorian Shadow Minister for Employment Tim Pallas said employees went as far as agreeing to take three months off without pay. They made a stand. They fought for their jobs," Mr Pallas said. It's about time (Premier) Denis Napthine showed he was genuinely concerned.