One of the clear opportunities for Australia’s manufacturing industry is to develop capacity to manufacture products locally where demand is current, and only set to rise.

While there are plenty of products where the
cost-benefit calculation means offshore manufacturing makes sense, there are other products, particularly in emerging spaces like clean energy and food sustainability, where it makes sense to develop local capacity.

The Australian Government has recently announced the Modern Manufacturing Strategy. This strategy aims to help Australian manufacturing scale up and become more competitive and resilient. The strategy aims to achieve this via four pillars:

1. Getting the economic conditions right for business
2. Making science and technology work for industry
3. Focusing on areas of advantage
4. Building national resilience for a stronger economy

The various pillars of the plan will take between two and 10 years to achieve, and require considerable collaboration between government, industry, the finance sector and unions.

This paper looks at some areas where Australia may be able to build a stake in the global manufacturing sector, and what some of the challenges and benefits might be.