The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound impact across both Australian society and Australian manufacturing. Based in Wingfield, South Australia, Axiom Precision Manufacturing is one of many manufacturing companies that have drastically adapted their operations in response to the pandemic. William Poole spoke to Craig Maynard, the company’s general manager.
AMT: Firstly, tell us about Axiom Precision Manufacturing and what you’d been doing as a business prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Craig Maynard: Axiom Precision Manufacturing is a 40-year-old family-owned company. Before coronavirus we had mainly been doing defence, aerospace and some medical manufacturing; precision machining, assemblies and electronics integration as our focus. We spent 35 years in automotive manufacturing, in tooling and production. We did work for Toyota and Ford, and a little bit for Holden. But also tooling exports to the US, South America and South Africa. Now with precision machining we’re exporting both indirectly and directly with defence projects such as the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Silvershield program. Since automotive finished, we’ve experienced significant growth with defence and aerospace over the last few years, growing from 40 to 70 staff.
AMT: How has coronovirus affected the business?
CM: With coronavirus, we saw a little bit of a change. With defence, we’re still pushing full steam ahead. They didn’t want to slow that down. We saw a few changes in how the business was run. We split up teams so that if a member of the team got sick, it didn’t mean the whole team got sick. We did that through working from home and also working at our other site. But as far as the workload goes, we didn’t see much change in that. It actually increased just through the interest in medical items such as personal protective equipment (PPE).
We have seen a bit of change with people wanting to bring manufacturing back to Australia. Some companies that normally go to China are bringing manufacturing back into Australia, looking for other options: a bit of contract manufacturing and some tooling work. We’ve seen companies coming back, not wanting to send work overseas. There’s also been some production work as well, with medical items, and some low-volume production where people have normally got it made offshore; they’re starting to bring it back and exploring what other options they’ve got to get it made locally. I think once China shut down, people saw they had no supplies for a couple of months and realised that they need to look at other options.
AMT: Obviously, Axiom has a background in medical. You’ve recently been involved in a project to produce face shields for healthcare workers. What can you tell us about that?
CM: That was in conjunction with the Defence Science & Technology (DST) – we’ve worked with them for about 10 years now on various projects. One of those projects was the Silvershield and Redwing IED protection device, which featured injection-moulded components. Once DST determined that there was going to be a shortage of PPE and they needed some quick turnaround on tooling and moulding, they came to us with a design of what could potentially be manufactured quite quickly in Australia with available materials.
Following that initial discussion, once they had their final design, we started building a tool. It took us a week to build the tool, eight calendar days, which is pretty quick when we had a four-day Easter break in there. We were then moulding parts the following Friday. The rapid turnaround from design to production was a result of the long-term working relationship Axiom had with DST and having the capability to build a tool and mould the parts in-house. With Axiom being able to manage design, tool build and moulding in-house, that went a long way to achieving such a short delivery time.
AMT: And you’re up and running with production of these parts now?
CM: We are running production, we’ve sent a batch of parts out for initial feedback on the feel and comfort during long periods of use and also any potential concerns they have with it. The initial feedback we have received is positive, with some minor changes to the part being suggested. There is interest from overseas in the units, as well as interest locally. The unit is a low-cost option in terms of manufacturing, so it could prove to be a very benificial PPE item locally and internationally.
AMT: What do you think the crisis has revealed about the importance of Australia having a local strong local manufacturing base?
CM: I think it has really shown we can’t rely on just buying products from overseas. We’d recognised that before, and especially in defence the Government has had a push for a little while now on sovereign capability. But this has really emphasised the importance of that. I think some people may have just seen sovereign capability as a catchphrase, but now we’ve really seen the benefit of it. This will flow down to medical and other areas of manufacturing as well. It has really highlghted the need to have that strong Australian manufacturing base, where you can buy products without having to rely on them coming from overseas.
Even where we do have Australian manufacturing … of toilet paper for example, there was a shortage for a long time even though it is manufactured in Australia. Imagine if you had to bring that in from overseas, how much more trouble you’d be in. So I think it’s really emphasised you need that sovereign capability for all types of manufacturing. The car industry may never come back, at least not for a conventional car. But maybe an electric car is where we could be looking now, manufacturing something like that, so you’re not relying on bringing cars in as well. Especially with defence industry, it shows that you do need sovereign capability, because you don’t know when an event will change the global landscape, that could change the supply chain of where you can get your products.
AMT: What do you think government could be doing to help build that sovereign manufacturing capability?
CM: I think one of the best ways the Government can help build sovereign manufacturing capability is to have a bipartisan sovereign purchasing policy. It’s great that the Government is providing grant funding to help build sovereign manufacturing capability. But companies have got to have the confidence to invest in training and machine capability to make the most of these grant opportunities. There’s no point investing with grants and spending all this money on capability if two years down the track we have a change in government, resulting in a change of policy and stops buying locally, or the big programs stop buying locally. That’s where you need that support from government, with policies around buying local, and making sure it’s not just the appearance of buying local, where the Prime or the Tier One to the Prime is a local company, but then they buy everything from offshore. We need to make sure that it’s flowing right down the chain of buying local and manufacturing local; not just buying from this Australian company even though they’re just buying everything offshore, because that just defeats the purpose of all the investment from the Government. So the Government’s got to lead the way with their buying habits, and then others will follow suit.
We’ve seen over the last 100 years what Australia has come up with. Now it’s about making sure that we nurture that industry. It’s starting to grow – we’re seeing training happening, more apprentices being employed. Unfortunately it’s probably about 10 years too late, but at least the effort’s being made down and the investment’s being made to try and bring it back, which is really good.