Industry News

The June result comes in the wake of April’s largest ever monthly fall in the Australian PMI (readings above 50 points indicate expansion in activity, with higher results indicating a faster rate of expansion). However, while the result is the largest ever monthly rise, it was narrowly focused on some sub sectors and indicates an improvement from recent depths rather than a recovery to buoyant conditions. Almost all of the improvement reflected in June’s Australian PMI was concentrated in the large food & beverages sector, with new orders from food wholesale distributors improving with the relaxation of trading restrictions. Less positively, manufacturers who supply locally made metal products and building materials to the construction industry reported a sharp reduction in new orders. “Manufacturing performance edged ahead in June largely on the back of a solid lift in the large food & beverages sector as restrictions on cafes and restaurants were eased,” said Ai Group Chief Executive Innes Willox. “The machinery & equipment sector enjoyed a spike in sales associated with end-of-financial…

AMT: Firstly, tell us about Bosch Australia and the business’ activities. Gavin Smith: Bosch Australia is the representative subsidiary for the Bosch group in Australia and New Zealand. The company here has been around in one form or another trading since the early 1900s. The company’s grown in different directions, but it literally does a little bit of that which Bosch does everywhere. We operate across four sectors: mobility solutions, consumer goods, industrial goods, and building & energy technologies. Some of our businesses are the leaders in their field and large in scale, others are small and relatively new to our portfolio. But we have a team of about 1,300 people across Australia and New Zealand. Our turnover is just under a billion Australian dollars this year. And we are still a significant manufacturing and engineering location for the Bosch group in the areas of vehicle safety and comfort electronics, and we import and trade the…

With over 40 years’ industry experience, Genis Steel manages all aspects of steel fabrication from on-site measuring, in-house drafting, fabrication, through to full site installation. With extensive in-house capabilities and state-of-the-art facilities in both Melbourne and Adelaide, Genis Steel is able to provide a range of steel construction components for domestic dwellings, architecturally designed projects and multi-level apartments right through to industrial, commercial and government projects. Genis Steel recently expanded into South Australia, opening a state-of-the-art fabrication facility at the Lionsgate Business Park in Elizabeth South. This large facility, which was once home to Holden’s press shops, boasts over 15m clear heights and a 100-tonne lifting capacity. Combined with Genis Steel’s technical capabilities, workmanship and reputation for quality fabrication, the scale of the facility will enable the company to handle an almost unlimited scope of work. Coregas worked closely with Genis…

With the use of network communication, new digital technologies combine physical manufacturing systems with virtual worlds of knowledge and 3D modelling. The target is significantly increased output, but as manufacturing systems considerably improve their intellectual features and decision-making capabilities, they necessarily become more complicated and more expensive. Minimising the downtime of such systems is a ‘must’ for the development of every system component such as machine tools, workholding devices or cutting tools. Cutting tools can not only cut metal but also cut downtime, depending on their design concept. Assembled cutting tools with exchangeable cutting heads from cemented carbides are very common in metalworking today. Two decades ago, there were very few systems built on an exchangeable head principle. Now, practically every leading cutting tool manufacturer has this type of system in its product range. Advances in tool grinding and resharpening machines have…

While William Buck’s FRAA division has been operational for some time, it is significant to a wider range of businesses in the current environment given the regulatory changes, tax breaks, and widespread restructuring resulting from the global pandemic. FRAA advisors are available to assist CFOs and financial controllers to listed public, unlisted public and private companies on the proper implementation of Australian Accounting Standards (AASB) and the Australian equivalents to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). FRAA will also assist with complex accounting matters such as impairment testing, business combinations and share-based payments. The service line can also assist with the preparation of general-purpose financial reports for public interest entities to allow CFO’s and financial controllers to concentrate on operational matters rather than annual compliance. With 13 years’ experience and strong insights across a broad range of industries and markets, William Buck’s Director Alan Finnis leads the FRAA division. Finnis said the FRAA team assists companies to understand the ‘real-life’ implications…

Profit of course is a most simple metric for business outcomes, indeed the very reason the business exists. There is a simple metric for managing growth and increased staff numbers: Profit divided by Headcount (P/H). A new hire initially costs money, so expect a short-term dip in the P/H result, but in the longer term this number should in fact be bigger than the pre-hire number. If that’s not the case, then the new person is in fact costing you money. This of course disregards any lifestyle choice you may make in sacrificing a higher P/H to enable yourself more leisure time. A laudable choice, of course. In larger organisations we often see headcount grow for no good reason. In good times new people are hired with scant regard for the return on the investment they deliver. This is even more prevalent in Government, where a simple profit metric may not…

With nearly 200 staff at its factory in Porirua, Wellington, Whittaker’s produces the highest-quality chocolate products for both the domestic and export markets. During the 1950s Whittaker’s developed the Peanut Slab. It has since become an iconic product and the recipe has never changed. In the 1990s the company started to make its first chocolate blocks, which are now New Zealand’s favourite blocks. Whittaker’s is a ‘beans to bar’ company, controlling the whole process from roasting the beans to the final product. This is to ensure only chocolates of the highest quality are produced. With a philosophy of purity and environmental consideration, the company does not use palm oil or genetically modified ingredients in the manufacturing process. Evidence of Whittaker’s popularity and recognition in New Zealand is reflected in numerous awards. This includes being voted New Zealand’s most trusted brand in the Reader’s Digest annual…

AMT: Tell us firstly about the Industry Capability Network Limited and its activities. Warren Jansen: The Industry Capability Network Limited (ICNL) is a national entity that co-ordinates activities for the Industry Capability Network (ICN) offices across the country. There is a presence of ICN offices in most states, and ICNL acts as the national office and primarily develops and manages our IT platform, ICN Gateway, which bring suppliers and buyers together on-line. We bring businesses together. We’ve got local suppliers who look for work, and there are buyers – we call them proponents – who handle large-scale projects. The projects might be based in the mining sector, the oil & gas industry, infrastructure, construction, defence and so on. And we act as an intermediary to bring those buyers and suppliers together. We ensure that supply chains function adequately to service these projects. There’s a whole raft of different industries that we cater to, and our platform services all these buyers and suppliers, and helps drive Australian industry through this matchmaking process. In recent times however, we have…

Shortly after beginning work at Melbourne’s IMTS Machinery in 2006, Simon Stain made his first phone call to the company’s supplier, Prima Power in Italy, to introduce himself to his contact, Marco Daimo. Remarkably, 14 years later, it is still Marco who Simon calls at the Prima Power headquarters in Turin today, several times a month. Not only have the pair formed a watertight working relationship during that time, but they have a strong friendship. IMTS Machinery may be a leading supplier of world-class sheetmetal and laser cutting products and the sole agent for Prima Power systems in Australia. However, it is the company’s focus on relationships and longevity of experience that really sets it apart in the sheet metal fabrication market. Now business development manager at IMTS, Simon says that before coronavirus, he and Marco probably saw each other four or five times a year. “Sometimes I would take clients to Europe for a product demonstration or Marco would come…

Manufacturing has slipped from 28% of Australia’s GDP in the mid 1960s to just 5% today. While it is easy to blame the demise of Australian manufacturing on the rise of Asia as ‘the world’s factory’, there are significant structural deficiencies in our economy and in government policy that have contributed to the situation: in Leadership, Investment, Education, and Compliance. While none of these issues can be solved in the short term, strategic incremental movements over time will engender confidence, and help reverse the downward slide of Australian manufacturing. Leadership Successful industrial nations, like Sweden, South Korea and Germany, regard manufacturing as essential to their economies and social infrastructure. This fosters a degree of bi-partisanship and strategy that is strongly supported by voters. In Australia, manufacturing has been denigrated as a ‘Rust Industry’. Research & development (R&D) tax concessions come and go with successive budgets, as does critical CSIRO funding. Development grants for small…

Advatek Lighting is a small business dedicated to developing innovative, world-class control systems for decorative LED lighting. The type of lighting is commonly referred to as “Pixel” technology, where each LED can be digitally controlled to be any colour using specially designed integrated circuits. Advatek’s control systems are state-of-the-art in the field and typically interface between lighting software using an Ethernet network interface and many different types of digital LEDs. Advatek has been operating for around five years now and has a growing customer base worldwide. Approximately 80% of its business comes from international sales. The challenge This project entailed the design of a plastic enclosure to form part of a new digital LED control system. The goal was to create a robust but cost-effective housing for part of the system, which would have been difficult to achieve with a typical metal enclosure. Tightly placed electronic components, connectors and fuses all needed access from multiple angles in a small overall footprint. This meant the design would be complex, heavy and…

Over the years, I have worked for some manufacturing heavyweights, such as Robert Bosch Australia, the Ford Motor Company of Australia, BASF and OI, to name a few. I have steadily watched Australia’s manufacturing capability slowly leave our shores as we have restructured operations through outsourcing and offshoring of activities. This has occurred despite exemplary, locally driven productivity and quality outcomes. COVID-19 has no doubt impacted the sector further, resulting in unprecedented consequences for manufacturers and supply chains. Risk mitigation strategies for the manufacturing and supply chain sector require integration between existing safety practices combined with new approaches. Collaboration with designers, technology companies and our industry bodies will be paramount, to increase sustainability and resilience in the current market. From an occupational or work health and safety (OHS/WHS)…

Founded in 1980 by Susan and Peter Cull, ICT developed precision instruments to accurately measure, monitor and understand how water could make a significant difference to some of the major challenges in food production and land use – decades before the term “climate change” become part of everyday language. A regional success story, ICT’s research & development program has allowed the organisation to design, develop, produce and export their quantitative monitoring technologies to some of the harshest environments across the globe. The company has worked collaboratively with leading soil, plant and environmental scientists in Australia and overseas and in the process have grown local skills, capabilities and employment opportunities in the region. Found across the globe, ICT’s products have been installed to measure plant water use (via sap flow) and water stress (psychrometry), along with…