Jayco boss wants more campsites

The boss of Australia’s biggest RV manufacturer wants state and national government to open up more space in national parks for camping.

Citing evidence that caravan parks continue to be sold off to developers and not replaced with new ones, Jayco boss Gerry Ryan told Fairfax Media that more government-run campgrounds would also boost government revenue.

“The industry is looking to the government to hopefully free up some of the national parks,” Ryan said.

"People have been camping for years and will continue to camp for years, and we need to make sure that we have got the facilities, the camp grounds, for people to park their vans," he said.

"You are seeing some of the parks, some of the best real estate, being turned into residential housing that gives a better return.”

Other insights offered by Ryan included:

- Jayco, which has around 45 per cent share of Australia’s new RV market and 35 per cent of New Zealand’s, is on track for a record year, with production currently up 10 per cent.The forecast is 11,000 RVs built in 2015, and up to 11,600 in 2016.

- Growth is a result of young families entering the market rather than traditional 'grey nomads'

- Jayco has doubled staff numbers at its Dandenong, Victoria factory in last six years and by 300 over the past year alone, to a current total of 1200 employees.

- Jayco is not planning to capitalise on growing interest in camping in China, through exports, due to high cost of freight. It’s also cheaper for the Chinese to import RVs from the US.

- Ryan expects demand for campervans and motorhomes to grow by 50 per cent over the next three years (Note: Jayco has built a larger motorhome production facility to cater for this).

Meanwhile, perhaps to cater for the increasing popularity of free camping, Caravanning News is also reporting that Jayco is “now fitting fully certified, self-contained 85 litre grey-water tanks” on some of its models.