A Counter to Doomsayers of Manufacturing in Australia
Every day people in positions of ‘opinion authority’ make choices about what ‘opinions’ they will offer on a whole array of subjects. And it would be fair to say that over the past five years or so, many of those ‘opinion authorities’ have been significantly negative on Australia’s manufacturing sector. There’s no doubt that the sector is undergoing change which includes a shrinking base and fewer employees. And allowing me to counter with just one observation – it seems to me that the vast majority of these ‘opinion authorities’ have NO CLUES as to how well some areas of Australian Manufacturing are going,
Now I’m not going to go too extensively into this observation but any of these opinion authorities might for one just go and visit Hilton Manufacturing in Dandenong, chat to them about their ongoing growth, their continued demand and some of the initiatives they take beyond the manufacturing sector.
And let me prompt you just one step further because Australia’s manufacturing supply chain has brilliance all the way through it. One case in point in the Industrial Design company Katapult Design in Byron Bay. They probably make surfboards or hair beads right? Er no. Katapult Design have just won a Global award, the Red Dot award which is the ‘Academy Award’ of Industrial Design for their design work in Medical Products. The Best of the Best 2013 award
Katapult were approached by an overseas company to undertake the design work. Nathan Pollock and his team do other brilliant work for companies around Australia – manufacturing companies. So the next time any of these ‘opinion authorities’ open their mouths about the future of manufacturing in Australia, tell them to pull their heads in, or at the least, take their blinkers off
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