Venture capital to drive OKA

Venture capitalist Oliver Barnes, backed by former Glencore trader David Trimboli's family office, Seefeld Investments, has established a new corporate entity, OKA Holdings, through which he plans to fund expansion into batch production of up to 20 vehicles at a time.

Established in the 1980s, OKA has had a chequered history, including a listing on the ASX and the eventual acquisition of the firm’s assets by Malaysian interests.

In contrast, drivers of the vehicles have cherished their off-road capability, payload, and durability—often over decades of ownership and hundreds of thousands of kilometres across extreme terrains.

OKA’s intellectual property has been owned since 2017 by Dean Robinson, who has kept the brand alive by developing and refurbishing older models at his small factory in O’Connor.

During much of that time, Mr Robinson has said he was open to capital investment to support development and bring OKA into the modern era.

That opportunity appears to have arrived with Mr Barnes, who now controls the recently registered OKA Holdings. He says the intention is to raise the capital required to improve production efficiency and to develop a hybrid version of the truck, which has until now been wholly diesel-powered. A backer of OKA Holdings is Seefeld, Mr Trimboli’s Mount Lawley-based family office, which invests up to $7.5 million across a range of sectors.

Mr Trimboli is understood to have been a major trader at Glencore International when it listed on the London Stock Exchange. He has since become a private financier and is a co-owner of the Perth Heat baseball team.

Mr Barnes and Mr Robinson told Business News that their motivation is to reduce the unit cost of OKA vehicles. The brand is currently limited to the luxury camping sector, where it has a cult following.

Mr Barnes said that while the vehicles have “lasted forever,” the intensity of the original building process was flawed and made it impossible to scale production for specialist markets without significant change.

“It is an excellent platform, but we are taking a different position,” he said.

Essentially, Mr Barnes’ proposal is to shift to a leaner production model using outsourced “sub-assembly” partners for key elements of each vehicle, allowing for batches of around 20 to be produced at a time.

OKA Holdings proposes this model would support a niche fleet offering, which the company would lease to users such as emergency services, infrastructure providers, mining companies, and others who require the terrain flexibility and payload that OKA vehicles offer.

This approach is the antithesis of the original OKA model, which relied on a large-scale assembly plant that never reached its intended capacity.