Nominations open for the 2018 Endeavour Awards
Nominations for the 2018 Endeavour Awards for outstanding Australian manufacturers have opened, offering Australia’s most innovative firms an opportunity to gain industry wide recognition for their achievements over the last twelve months. The annual awards are presented by Manufacturers’ Monthly and are supported by National Manufacturing Week.
Celebrating the rebirth of Australian Manufacturing
Although traditional sectors such as the automobile industry have suffered decades of decline in the face of cheaper Asian competition, Australian manufacturing is undergoing a resurgence as niche firms and new sectors take advantages of high tech ‘industry 4.0’ approaches including robotics and 3D printing to join high value global supply chains.
Long established engineering firms are diversifying into new areas, and adding value at different stages of the supply chain, while a range of manufacturers are carving out new markets abroad and innovating both in terms of products and productive processes.
Although the relative size of the manufacturing sector continues to shrink, given the power of primary industries and the growth of the service sector, manufacturers themselves are creating new streams of revenue through long term, value added service provision.
Australia currently ranks 21st in terms of global competitiveness, according to the 2017-18 World Economic Forum competitiveness report, but continuing investment in research and skills at both the government and commercial level, aims to improve that position over time.
As manufacturing reinvents itself for the 21st century, it is poised to lead growth in the future, rather than being seen as a dinosaur of the past. A value proposition to customers based on leading-edge technologies, high-levels of research and development, highly skilled staff and customer service excellence is the only way in which Australian firms can compete against low cost foreign competition.
Firms which choose to place themselves at the cutting edge, actively seek export opportunities and invest in their own staff will be well placed to weather economic and technological change, from whatever direction it may come, and are encouraged to seek recognition by applying for this year’s awards.
2017 Award Winners
Redarc Electronics was named manufacturer of the year in 2017, as well as being recognised as the most innovative manufacturing firm. Established in 1979 and based in Lonsdale, south of Adelaide, it designs and manufacturers electronics for batteries in vehicles from cars, trucks and buses to boats, trains, mining vehicles.
Its products include voltage converters, inverters, power supplies, battery chargers, turbo timers, glow plug timers, LED lighting control systems and trailer braking solutions and, significantly, it holds patents on the products it develops. It sells mainly to the heavy trucking, automotive, industrial, agricultural, communications and defence sectors, underlining the importance of smaller Australian firms to major supply chains in this country.
NuFarm was judged the year’s best exporter. An agricultural chemical company based in Melbourne, it was founded in 1956, holds more than 2,100 product registrations and sells its products in more than a hundred countries around the world.
Yumarr Automation was recognised as the most outstanding start up for its work in developing automatic mining safety gear, while Enerpac won recognition for its electric torque wrench as the year’s best industrial product. Schneider Electric won the prize for technology application, while United Forklift had the best safety product and Greenland Systems offered the year’s best environmental solution.
