By GARRY HOWE
OVERSEEING one of the most impressive business and property portfolios in the Casey Cardinia Region is a long way from selling newspapers twice a day on a busy suburban intersection.
But that’s where brothers Ray and Ron Weinzierl and their siblings started to develop the work ethic and business acumen required to head up the likes of multi award winning component manufacturer Australian Precision Technologies in Berwick and the sprawling retail enterprise Car Megamart in Pakenham.
They remember as young kids selling copies of The Sun at the corner of Springvale Road and Police Road in the morning and returned in the afternoon with an armful of Heralds (before the papers morphed into the one entity).
Ron has happy memories of cashing in on 26 September 1983 – the day John Bertrand steered Australia II to the nation’s first win in the America’s Cup – when the papers went like hotcakes.
“I sold a record number that day, about 350 I think,” he recalled. “I think the Sun sold for about 20 cents back then and people were so happy they were giving me 50 cents a copy and even a few dollar notes.”
On weekends, they would supplement their income by selling Chiko rolls and Footy Records at VFL Park in Waverley.
Like many large migrant families in the 1950s and ‘60s, they learned the value of good old-fashioned hard work.
“We never went without, but we soon worked out that if you wanted something you had to work for it,” Ray said.
Their parents Rudy and Maria migrated from Austria in 1956 with little more than what they carried in their suitcases, first settling in Newport, then in Mulgrave, where their eight children grew up.
Rudy worked six days a week as a fitter and turner making parts for the mining industry and had another job on the side and half the backyard was converted into a vegetable garden to help keep food on the table.
Maria cared for the growing brood – the boys Rudy junior, Robert, Richard, Ray and Ron and their sisters Vicki and Nevenka. The eldest boy Millera lives in Yugoslavia.
Rudy worked for 35 years and, like many of his generation, was careful with his money, making sure there was always some tucked away for a rainy day.
He and Maria loved their golf and when Rudy died about 10 years ago, she donated a brand-new pair of golf shoes to the Pakenham Golf Club.
The man who inherited them found a cheque for $85,000 stuffed in one of the shoes, which turned out to be a part of his superannuation payout.
“He was old school,” Ray explained. “He had kept it there just in case.
“Unfortunately, the cheque was too old to cash by the time in turned up.”
The boys didn’t exactly excel at school.
Ron made it halfway through Year 11 and Ray was asked to leave Clayton Tech in Year 10. “School just wasn’t for me,” he laughed.
The business empire started reasonably modestly in 1990 when Ray and business partner Conrad Baerschmidt started WB Cabinets in Intrepid Drive, Berwick. He bought a block to build the factory, then purchased another next door to build another factory to sell or lease out.
A few years down the track, they made a tidy sum when they sold those two properties, which allowed them to buy a fair chunk of the developing industrial estate to the east of Pakenham in Embrey Court.
They moved WB Cabinets there in 2005 and built 10 factories – two for their business and the other eight to sell.
Elder brother Richard started building components in Dandenong in 1992. He was joined in that venture by Ron and by 1998 Australian Precision Technologies was born. They relocated across the road from WB Cabinets in Intrepid Drive in Berwick in 2001 and continue to operate out of extended premises there.
Ron’s role was to develop APT into an industry leader and it has built up an impressive client base around the world building the likes of specialist aerospace components. The company has since won many industry awards and has been inducted into the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame.
The family’s next big venture came a few years back when Ray was driving along the Princes Freeway and noticed a Toyota dealership sitting in a paddock alone in Pakenham’s new South East Industrial Park.
A friend had an involvement in Car City in Ringwood and had mentioned one day that 40 per cent of their business came from the Gippsland area.
So he thought: “Why wouldn’t we have a Car MegaMart here?”
Ray and a few mates bought 38 acres along South East Boulevard and opened his own city of cars in 2014, which has developed in stages and will soon offer rows and rows of motorcycles and boats to complement the cars.
More recently he bought another 38 acres across the other side of South East Boulevard and development will fan across there as well.
The Weinzierls don’t believe in going it alone in business and try to include their growing network of business associates into any new venture.
“You mix with good people and do the right thing by your network,” Ron explained.
Ray joined a well-established Pakenham business family when he married Bridget Hardy, the daughter of former Hardy’s Mitre 10 director Darrell Hardy and his wife Barbara, extending his business knowledge and influence.
“Darrell always tells me to get three or four different opinions and then go with your gut feel,” he said.
Some of their latest ventures have included purchasing and refurbishing the Cardinia Park Hotel in Beaconsfield and the Royal Hotel in Kooweerup.
They see a lot of potential in the Casey Cardinia Region and Ron and Ray particularly has been great advocates of the area, pushing for technology and innovation hubs at the soon to be vacant Monash University site in Berwick, as well as land along Soldiers Road and around the new Cardinia Shire offices in Officer.
