​Are Australian manufacturers ready for new development opportunities?

The pandemic has exposed areas of improvement and opened up development opportunities for Australian Manufacturers.

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Over the last few decades, Australian businesses have incrementally outsourced the manufacturing of goods to drive down expenses in their supply chain. In the process, many Australians lost their jobs and Australia’s manufacturing capabilities shrunk. Today, Australia’s manufacturing industry contributes $100 billion to the Australian GDP. To put that into perspective, Australia’s GDP is worth around $1.8 trillion.

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the need for domestic manufacturing capabilities in Australia. During the pandemic, Australia struggled to meet demands for face masks, ventilators and other items of the like to treat and prevent the spread of the virus. Other industries that relied heavily on imports also struggled during the pandemic. In particular, the pharmaceutical industry imports 90 per cent of its medicines. Australia is currently struggling to source enough vaccines to reach its goal of vaccinating the whole population by the end of October 2021.

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Much needed attention from the government

On the upside, the unprecedented pressure has supported revenue growth in the industry and gained much-needed attention from the government.

Government funding

Federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, announced that $15 billion of funding will go into the manufacturing industry if Labor wins the next election.

In October 2020, the government announced that there would be $1.5 billion in new government funding injected into the manufacturing industry over the next four years. This funding is part of the Modern Manufacturing Strategy (MMS) which is designed to develop Australia’s manufacturing capabilities. A key part of the MMS is the Modern Manufacturing Initiative (MMI) which will be an integral part in stimulating job growth in Australia.

The government will focus on strengthening the following manufacturing sectors:

• Resources technology and critical minerals processing
• Food and beverage
• Medical products
• Recycling and clean energy
• Defence
• Space

Recently, the government released a roadmap to drive investment into the food and beverage manufacturing sector and to create more local jobs. The roadmap is said to be particularly beneficial to regional Australia where many factories are located.

Targeted assistance for businesses post-JobKeeper

Outside of the MMS, the government has announced that there will be a $1.2 billion extension of wage subsidies for businesses taking on apprentices now that JobKeeper has ended. Businesses will need to have apprentices who have signed up before the end of September to be eligible for the subsidy. The subsidy will run for the first 12 months that the apprentice starts with the business.

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Preparing for business growth

This enormous support from the government offers manufacturers a great opportunity to develop and expand their businesses. Businesses have the opportunity to invest in new equipment and machinery, R&D and new technologies. With these upgrades, businesses will need to consider whether they have qualified staffing or if they need to start recruiting more talent to take their operations further.

Fuse Recruitment offers full site talent management solutions to our customers and has developed the capabilities to source suitable candidates in our specialist sectors. Our industry experts partner with customers to provide a tailored service to suit their specific talent solution needs.

We have strong recruitment processes allowing us to identify quality candidates for our customers. In the manufacturing industry, our recruitment capabilities extended to a variety of sectors including pharmaceuticals, packaging, medical device, equipment & machinery and more of the like. We are experienced in placing temporary and permanent roles across a range of positions such as:

• Graduate Engineers
• Microbiologists
• Head of Production
• Sales Specialists
• Manufacturing Engineers
• R&D Scientists
• Senior Quality and Technical Managers
• General Managers and CEO’s

If you’d like to partner with our team to solve your talent needs, fill out the form on this page and one of our industry specialists will be in contact with you shortly.