It is an exodus on a scale not seen before in Victoria's second city: Ford, Qantas, Alcoa and perhaps Shell will all soon be gone.
Ford's pull-out will see 510 manufacturing jobs go in late 2016 (although hundreds of design jobs with Ford will stay). About 300 airplane maintenance jobs will go at Qantas' Avalon hangars in March. Alcoa's 800 jobs in Geelong will be gone by the end of this year, as may 500 at the Shell refinery, which is up for sale.
But for those in the know about the future of Geelong's manufacturing sector, the outlook is not as bleak as the job losses suggest.
David Peart, chief executive of the Geelong Manufacturing Council, said the Alcoa announcement of the smelter's closure, while bad news for the region, had been a long time coming.
Mr Peart said that while it was not confirmed that all the big companies would go - Shell has given itself until the end of the year to find a buyer - there were many small and medium-sized businesses doing well in Geelong.
He cited Boundary Bend, an olive oil company based in the region, which was growing strongly. And he said technology such as that used in carbon fibre production was also giving great hope for the future, citing one-piece carbon-fibre wheel maker Carbon Revolution.
Deakin University is a key player in the future of the area, with the school providing much of the push for technology innovation. Vice-chancellor Jane den Hollander said that Tuesday had been a ''difficult day in what has been an extremely difficult year for Geelong''. But Professor den Hollander said Geelong would reinvent itself for ''the jobs of the future, as uncertain as that may seem today''.
She compared the exodus of global companies such as Alcoa and Ford with the decline of the wool era, after which the city reinvented itself as a manufacturing town. ''Over the past 40 years we have begun to grow a university in Geelong,'' she said, and this would help the region innovate and educate.
Geelong mayor Darryn Lyons said governments had for too long relied on ''Band-Aid solutions'' to keep manufacturing going in Australia.
''The Band-Aids that have been stuck on to prop up industry in this country are now coming off, and this is a sign of it,'' Cr Lyons said.
But he said the future for making things in Geelong was still bright. ''But we have to focus on smart manufacturing … We are sitting in a 3G mode and we need to look at a 5G mode,'' he said.
He pointed to Ford, which is keeping its research and design area in Geelong. ''They are keeping [those] people here because we have got the best designers in the world,'' he said.
Despite the optimism, however, there were some immediate impacts for the region that will be felt this year: a dramatic decline in rate revenue for Geelong Council.
The council's finance spokesman Srechko Kontelj, said the departing industrial giants would strip it of ''millions of dollars'' in much-needed rate revenue. ''It is going to have a marked impact on the council's budget, and we are going to have to cut our cloth to suit accordingly.''