ADVANTAGE: Beau Anderson is one apprentice set to benefit from a career at the Tomago site. Picture: Michael McGowan
FIVE years in the making the new $130 million WesTrac NSW/ACT headquarters in Tomago has officially opened.
Operations at the site began last Monday and though it will not be fully operational until September, workers are already beginning to arrive from Tomago locations across the Hunter.
Initially 400 WesTrac staff will work from the new site, with 150 new positions expected to be filled in the coming months.
The 51,436 square-metre site will serve as the company's NSW/ACT headquarters and includes 12 individual buildings connected by a central spine. The $12 million WesTrac Institute is one of them, a dedicated site serving as the training ground for about 350 apprentices from across NSW.
One of those apprentices is Corlette resident Beau Anderson.
Mr Anderson is in his second year with the company and the first of a mechanics apprenticeship which has him fitting the large Caterpillar equipment to the individual specifications required by the mining companies that use it.
He said having the institute on site would be a huge benefit.
"We should know absolutely everything by the time we come out," he said.
"We'll be 100 per cent professionals in our trade and know the machines inside out."
Mr Anderson said the new Tomago site was "insane".
"It is huge, everything is perfect and a million times better than what we had before," he said.
"They really put a lot of thought into it and everything is state of the art."
WesTrac is a part of the Seven Group and the major supplier of Caterpillar equipment in NSW the ACT and Western Australia.