Our latest insights

With the Federal Budget approaching, aligning trade policy with manufacturing ambitions is key to boosting investment confidence and rebuilding sovereign capability in Australia.

Explore how sustainability reporting can enhance compliance, supply chain resilience, and meet consumer expectations for manufacturing businesses.

The manufacturing sector has demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability, achieving steady growth through effective cost management and strategic investments despite economic challenges.

In the latest episode of Beyond the Numbers with Grant Thornton, Innovation Incentives Director Simone Barker and Michael Climpson, National Head of Manufacturing and a Partner in our Audit & Assurance team discuss what the mid-sized manufacturing sector currently looks like in Australia, how inflation has impacted the sector and what the Future Made in Australia initiative will look like in practice.

The recently announced ‘Future Made in Australia Act’ underscores the Government’s commitment to the manufacturing re-shoring objective, demonstrating a willingness to adopt an interventionist approach to safeguard and build our sovereign capabilities, ensure our competitiveness with neighbouring countries, and allies and guard against growing geo-political tensions.

This analysis of Australian mid-sized manufacturers has shown a positive outlook, with average year-on-year sales growing by 6.7 per cent in 2023. This growth can predominantly be attributed to increased capital expenditure and investing into emerging technologies. The outlook is particularly promising for business with revenue over $100m, whose scale has supported ongoing success through stronger forecasting linked to better pricing agreements and growing market shares due to their steady inventory.

While manufacturing has shown resilience and agility to pivot in the face of the pandemic, the pathway to the solidly Australia-based manufacturing capability the Albanese Government’s seeks, where we are able to “build what we need” and “rebuild our proud manufacturing industry”, is still somewhat unclear.

Australian manufacturers have been through difficult times, particularly with the shutdown of the automotive industry, but remaining businesses are proving to be agile and resilient having already battled through lots of challenges. In addition, the accelerating pace of new technologies being introduced, combined with COVID-19 disruption and the Government’s substantial industry support, many manufacturing business models have been fundamentally challenged for the better.

Once upon a time, certainly in living memory, Australia had a thriving and diverse manufacturing sector.

Although the knock-on effects of the Australian automotive industry exiting our country are yet to be fully understood, the industry is evolving, and manufacturing continues to be a major employer and critical to our overall economy.