Tag Archives: Australian Manufacturing PMI

Australian Manufacturing Recovery Continues 2025

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February 2025 Australian Manufacturing Grows

It is official. Australian Manufacturing is back in growth with the best results since November 2022.

This information comes from the Australia S&P Global Manufacturing PMI and we get notified when the results come out because we contribute to the survey. This continues on from the good signs of growth last month as reported in Australian PMI recovering 2025. So slow growth at 50.4 but still, growth. Note: anything above 50 is growth.

So what does this mean?

Australian Manufacturing is a very important sector for the Australian Economy with 1M direct full time jobs. That’s right, 1 milliton full time jobs in Australian Manufacturing. There are only 9.4M full time jobs in the whole economy. Plus it creates between 2.5 and 5 indirect jobs in other industries for every direct job in Australian Manufacturing. Making it responsible for more than a quarter of all full time jobs in Australia.

I think that is worth looking after!

Compete where you can

It is quite annoying that the media portrays it as on its deathbed. It isn’t easy to be competitive when you are in a high cost of doing business economy but then again, so is Japan, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland … You get the point. What they don’t try and do is compete on lowest price and neither should we. As an example, we recently opened our own Automated SMT PCB Assembly factory in Dandenong South and the first question I am usually asked is “So you are competing on Price”?

My answer is usually quite a surprise. It is “We absolutely are not competing on price”!

Which raises the obvious query of “So how can you compete”? As if price is the only option. Price is the easy one to measure. $ versus $. It is also the lazy one to measure. So here are the things we compete on, and depending on the client several could apply at the same time:

  • Time from order to delivery
  • Ease of doing business
  • We give you the same priority whether you want 1 or 500
  • Industry 4.0 – we can do product high mix at varying production volumes with fast turnaround and traceability
  • Efficiency of having direct access to the design team if there are any issues – eg. component substitutions being more common now than it used to be
  • Lower setup costs (this is the price we do win at)
  • And occassionally terms of business though this is very case dependent
AU Manufacturing PMI Feb 2025

AU Manufacturing PMI Feb 2025

So that little uptick on the right is January and February 2025 where we had a PMI of 50.2 and 50.4 respectively with.

And for your viewing pleasure, here is a video of our Automated SMT PCB Assembly line in action in our factory. We have added better fume extraction and visual inspection since then. We are not trying to take business off the other Contract Electronics Manufacturers in Australia. We are helping clients who aren’t yet ready for high volume production because they need prototypes or a small run for field trial units. We even partner with other local Contract Electronics Manufacturers helping their clients with design services and even the initial small production runs so they can get off the ground.

So let the good news continue.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design, Embedded Software Development and Electronics Manufacturing, focusing on products that are intended to be profitably Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 40 years.

You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

This post is Copyright © 2025 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Australian Manufacturing Grows Strongly in 2021

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Australian Manufacturing Still Going Strong

While we are still working out what the new normal is going to look like as we come to grips with COVID-19 and coming out of lockdown, there has been some good news.
 
Australian Manufacturing has been growing since 2016 and 2021 has seen some of the strongest growth as we finally wake up to the importance of being to make stuff.
 
Whether you want to call it Sovereign Capability, Economic Defensibility, Risk Management or any other synonym term, we can now see that not having local value creation ability in manufacturing is a risk we can’t afford.
 
Borrowing from another source and refactoring it I ended up with this as a definition I was happy with: Sovereign manufacturing capability ‘is the ability to design, build, sustain, upgrade and export Australian made product in Australian manufacturing facilities by Australian workers’. This is adapted from the Australian Parliamentary Report on Naval Shipbuilding Sovereign Capability.
 
In the last 3 months there were 91,000 new jobs created in Australian Manufacturing. Which represents a growth of around 10%.
 
And the Australian Manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) is also looking very healthy rising above 60 for several months this year (above 50 = growing, below 50 = shrinking).
 

Australian Manufacturing PMI 2021

Australian Manufacturing PMI 2021

And that is a healthy trend line. August saw a dip back down to slowly growing and interestingly August 2020 was a slight decrease. But the overall trend is excellent.
 
So I’m looking forward to this continuing through the rest of the year and 2022.
 
Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years.

You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

This post is Copyright © 2021 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Australian Manufacturing Growth Continues

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Australian Manufacturing PMI

 

Unlike what you are probably hearing from politicians, Australian Manufacturing is one of the current success stories of the Australian economy. Currently the second highest growth sector in Australia, Australian Manufacturing has been in growth every month bar one since mid 2015. Check out the chart below from Trading Economics Australian Manufacturing PMI.


source: tradingeconomics.com

 

Which is really great news for Australia because Australian Manufacturing:

 

  • creates fundamental value
  • creates more indirect jobs around it than any other industry
  • spreads wealth more evenly through the Australian community than any other industry

So jobs, equitable distribution of wealth and a thriving service sector are all better because of local manufacturing.

 

Australian made products

Our focus is on products you can make in Australia. And profitably of course. Some recent examples of Australian made products we have worked on are:

 

  • arcHUB smart cities sensor suite
  • Blair digital bagpipe
  • IND Technology fault detection systems
  • ABB CQ930 Smart Controller
  • HLP Controls Plumbguard electrical safety tester for plumbers
  • Wastech Bin Alerts compactor management system
  • Jamerson Controls commercial fridge / freezer management system
  • Hydrasmart and Waterlink water management and metering solutions

 

And quite a few we can’t tell you about yet.

 

Successful Endeavours is a leading economic indicator business. When we get busy, the Australian economy will be going through a lift in 6 to 12 months. And we are very busy right now. Which I am taking as a very good sign.

 

Some additional resources if you want to know more are:

 

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2018 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

Australian Manufacturing PMI Grows in 2017

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Australian Manufacturing PMI

The PMI, or Purchasing Manager’s Index, is a measure of whether a sector is growing or contracting. Growth is above 50 and contraction is below 50. So here is the last 12 months for Australian Manufacturing shown visually.

 

Australia Manufacturing PMI 2016-2017

Australia Manufacturing PMI 2016-2017

 

This is a continuing trend since mid 2015 and a really good thing for the overall Australian economy.

 

And to top it off, the growth in Australian Manufacturing in August 2017 was the highest since 2002. So really kicking some goals this year.

 

You can read more about it in:

 

 

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2017 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

I Nearly Retired

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Manufacturing Profits you can retire on

I was talking with one of our past clients a little while ago. They told me they had a problem. They said, “Ray, I nearly retired“! So I asked them what that meant. And they explained.

 

We had developed a product for them a decade ago. The total project cost then around $50,000 as it included both the product Electronics Design, Embedded Software and also the Automated Test Equipment (ATE) for Production Test which also had an Electronics Design, Embedded Software and Windows PC ATE Software component to it. And from that product they made nearly $2,000,000 in retained profit. From their perspective, nearly enough to retire on. And since they own the company it is theirs to distribute as they please. Now they wanted to do it again. So we are onto another very exciting Product Development for them. Can’t say any more about that yet.

 

So I thought about the value proposition here. The maths says:

 

2,000,000 / 50,000 = 40:1 Return On Investment (ROI).

 

And that ignores the total value of the economic activity and profits their suppliers and customers have made.

 

Return On Investment (ROI)

Return On Investment (ROI)

Manufacturing Spearheads Economic Growth

The Victorian Government estimates that every $1 spent with a business like Successful Endeavours, there is $100 of overall economic value generated for the state. Makes you wonder why they don’t invest themselves? They used to through things like the Technology Voucher Program but all of that is currently shut down.

 

And of course there are the jobs this generates. Again, Victorian Government estimates are that every job in manufacturing creates another five jobs around it in the supply chain and supporting businesses. That is the highest ratio of any industry.

 

So what’s not to love about Australian Manufacturing! Let’s look at the benefits:

 

  • creates fundamental value (so the service sector has something to leverage off)
  • creates jobs and then more indirect jobs than any other industry so it is great for employment
  • creates profits

 

And far from being in decline, the Australian Manufacturing PMI has been in growth most of the past  2 years so that is also really positive for the overall economy. Check out he graph below from the Australian Industry Group (AIG).

 

Australia Manufacturing PMI 2015-2017 shows growth the whole way

Australia Manufacturing PMI 2015-2017 shows growth the whole way

The above graph was created by Trading Economics. They provide a a useful way to use the AIG Australian Manufacturing PMI figures to get reports in the format you want. If you explore it more deeply, you can see that we took a hit to Australian Manufacturing during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) but it has been an upward trend from then on.

 

AIG

AIG

 

Go Australian Manufacturing!

 

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2017 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.