14 caravanworld.com.au
REGULARS news
NEW TRANSITION FOR
NEW AGE CARAVANS
New Age Caravans has been sold to The
Walkinshaw Group, a company known for its
investment and development in automotive
technology, after 12 months of negotiations.
New Age founder and CEO, Gabby
Montagnese, plans to continue to develop
and differentiate the New Age Caravan range
from its Epping, Victoria premises and will
take on a role on the Board of the company.
“One of the reasons I originally partnered
with the Walkinshaw organisation was
to bring new design and engineering
innovation to the market, and I look forward
to working with Board and executive team
to keep developing and evolving,” she said in
a statement.
“Our partnership with Walkinshaw
strengthens our ability to grow and bring
new and exciting product lines to our
customers. Walkinshaw's experience will
help us to accelerate our focus on growth
and innovation in caravans — including new
materials, engineering and processes."
The Walkinshaw name is well known
for its association with Holden SpecialVehicles (HSV), as well as V8 Supercar team
Walkinshaw Andretti United.
HSV has built more than 95,000 vehicles
and developed some of Australia’s most
iconic performance vehicles including the
original ‘Walky’, the Coupe 4, W427, and the
final Commodore incarnation the GTS-R
W1. Recently, HSV announced the latest
addition to its range with the launch of the
ZL1 Camaro claimed to become its most
powerful vehicle ever.
“We are excited about our ownership
of New Age Caravans,” said owner Ryan
Walk inshaw.
“We have been working steadily in the
background to develop new aspects to the
product, and we are looking forward to
accelerating the outputs from our design
and engineering teams.
Montagnese is the first and only female
CEO of a caravan manufacturer in Australia.
She has built a booming business, and has
been rewarded with accolades for her hard
work including winner of the CIAA 2016
Future Leaders Award, Caravan IndustryAssociation of Victoria’s Manufacturer
of the Year in 2017 and Excellence in
Manufacturing winner at the Manufacturers’
Monthly 2017 Women In Industry awards.
She recently told Caravan World it has
been tough leading on her own — and her
praise has been hard-won.
“At the time I got a lot of comments like
‘what would you know about caravans’
and ‘you’re not going to be able to run the
business on your own’, ‘you’re going to fail’
and ‘you’ll go broke,” she said.
“And there is the assumption that if I own
a business this big, then that must mean that
I am a crap mother.
“So now my opinion is more valued and
respected than it was five or six years ago
when people didn’t want to know who
I was. It is a good feeling now, but it is
disappointing that you had to get runs on
the board for you to be able to get respect
first. So what I had to do was grow the
business and produce 3000 products a year
and then people go ‘shit, she must know
what she’s on about’.”