The decline of Victorian manufacturing will have effects that flow throughout the state and the rest of the country, the first of which may be the death of the state’s electricity industry.

A representative of rural Victorian trade and employment says with sites such as the Alcoa refinery near Geelong closing down, power stations in the Latrobe Valley are now at risk.

Secretary of the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council, John Parker, says it shows the potential scale of shut-downs flowing from the downturn in manufacturing.

“Closure of the Alcoa and the manufacturing base out of Geelong, which our power is a major supplier to those facilities... [means that] that demand has gone down,” Mr Parker told the ABC.

“Yallourn has turned off one of its generators.

“I think that we will lose one of the power stations and I'm still tipping that it will still be half of Yallourn and Hazelwood that will close.

“They've reached their life expectancy and the demand will continue to go down,” he said.

Insiders say power generation is not the only sector that will suffer if Victoria stops manufacturing, though there are many possibilities in the state and around Australia to make products and developments that no other part of the world is producing industrially.