Getting local manufacturing booming again! What do we need to do?

I took part in the Federal Governments manufacturing forum held by Andrew Wallace, member for Fisher, here on the Sunshine Coast today.

If you're looking at seriously scaling your manufacturing business over the next year, then you might want to look into your businesses eligibility to obtain a share of the $1.5 billion dollars the federal government has announced as part of its modern manufacturing strategy.

It was suggested that if you're thinking of applying, you might want to consider using a grant writer for the application, but if you make it through stage one, don't forget they'll be asking you the questions, not the writer!

After the presentation, I discussed the event with a couple of local business owners there, who were a little confused at the event and no surprise there. Is the secret to rebuilding our manufacturing sector simply about scaling already relatively successful businesses, or just rebuilding manufacturing in general, even low tech?

The other issue that one lady said to me was we need to make it simple to know what's Australian produced so you can easily make a decision, especially at a supermarket. Why don't they make it easy to distinguish between Australian and not. Well that's simple, and it's probably because 90% of the income comes from non Australian produced or owned products.

There's no doubt we have a long way to go and what's been made so obvious is the supply chain gaps we have and the out of balance reliance on imports and what we should be doing to fix the problem, is supporting locally made and owned, by making it easier to find them whilst focusing attention on import replacement, as someone else said today.

One of the guest speakers today said that on the Sunshine Coast, there's a belief, that we don't have the skills or technology to do some things and in fact, one local school principal, has been telling their students, if you want a real job, you'll need to move away from here and go to a capital city and that's simply not true. We do have it here. But if we don't start supporting all local businesses that are locally owed, and local manufacture in both high and low tech areas, then that very well could end up being true.

If you'd like the details of where to go for information about the modern manufacturing strategy and grants, it's all on the government website, or message me and I'll send you the link.

If you want to support locally owned business, the first step is know who, what and where they are, because we have them here. Register as either a business or customer, it's free. Just click the link: https://form.jotform.co/90707302203848

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