Kacor Australia

Kacor was an Australian-ran property development conglomerate active between 1970 and 1981.

The Kaiser Aetna Jennings (KAJ) partnership formed in June 1970 as a private consortium jointly owned by Kaiser Steel, Aetna Life and AVJennings.^[1] Officially announced on 13 August 1970 with a capital of $6m, the partnership was established to provide several large-scale "community developments" on land owned by Jennings in Sydney and Melbourne.^[2]

AVJennings was an Australian residential construction company founded in 1932. With help from the post-WW2 property boom, it became the largest builder in the country by the 1970s, with major developments underway all around Australia.^[3] Kaiser Aetna had been established in 1969 as a $200m joint venture between American steel industry giant Kaiser and leading insurer Aetna. Based in California, the conglomerate owned over 120,000 acres across the America by 1970.^[4]

Overseen by general manager Don McLellan, Kaiser Aetna Jennings had a staff of 12 by 1971, most of whom were industry experts and analysts giving advice about land acquisitions. Managerially, KAJ held a philosophy of thoroughly assessing potential investments – in contrast to the often aggressive, intuitive nature of competitors.^[5] By July 1971, KAJ had acquired 1633 acres of land for its future developments. Going into the 1971–72 financial year, it reported a "modest profit" from its developments – contributing to record turnovers at Jennings and satisfactory earnings for Kaiser Aetna.^[6][7][8]

In 1971, planning and construction was already well underway on a number of KAJ's outer-Melbourne projects – including the Glenvale and Monash Industrial Estates near the intersection of Wellington & Springvale Roads in Mulgrave, the Thomastown Industrial Estate off Settlement Road, and the Bayswater Industrial estate at London Drive.^[9] KAJ also briefly owned the former Fritsch Holzer brickworks in Hawthorn, intending to develop it for industrial land, but instead auctioned it off for a profit.^[10]

By far, KAJ's most ambitious project was the Dandenong Park Industrial Estate at Dandenong South. With an estimated cost of $18m, it occupied 190 acres and was set to provide around 15,000 jobs.^[11][12] It also featured a service complex for employees, including a creche for working mothers, dental and medical services, a hotel-motel complex, shops, and commercial offices.^[13] In New South Wales, KAJ operated from offices at 139 Macquarie Street, Sydney.^[14] Large industrial sites went to sale in Blacktown, around Bessemer Street and Sunnyholt Road in 1971.^[15] Another industrial estate was located off the Great Western Highway at Amax Avenue, in Girraween.^[16]

In June 1972, Jennings abruptly announced that it would withdraw from of its venture with Kaiser Aetna over internal disagreements.^[17] Looking to the future, a Jennings spokesperson said that the company would prefer to approach property development with Kaiser Aetna on a project-by-project basis rather than as a joint owner of an ongoing business.^[18]

Following the dissolution of KAJ, Kaiser Aetna considered floating to a public company on the ASX but instead restructured in preparation for a future diversification.^[19][17] This came in June 1973, when Kaiser Aetna Australia launched their Victorian residential construction division. Known as Macquarie Builders, it focused on building homes at Kaiser Aetna's housing estates in the Victorian suburbs of Vermont South, Wheelers Hill, Eltham, and Doncaster.

The first three Macquarie display homes opened in early 1974 at Stage 1 of Kaiser Aetna's "Pioneer Ridge" estate at Vermont South – which is identifiable by it's street names that share an old-Australian theme like Colonial Drive and Explorers Court. A second stage was subdivided and the display village was expanded in 1975, bringing the total number of blocks to over 200.^[20]