This investment plays to Australia’s strengths – product innovation, process efficiency and strong after-sales support services – to differentiate Australia’s manufacturers from its competitors.
We are adding a new $100 million Advanced Manufacturing Fund to other strategic measures that have been enhancing the competitiveness, resourcefulness and resilience of manufacturing firms enabling them to generate jobs and take advantage of burgeoning global markets, like Asia.
The $100 million package includes:
- $47.5 million for a new Advanced Manufacturing Growth Fund, committed over two years, building on the existing $155 million Growth Fund that helps industry adjust to the wind-down of car manufacturing. The funding is for up to a third of the project cost of capital upgrades to establish and expand high value manufacturing in South Australia and Victoria. This will help make businesses more competitive through innovative processes and equipment
- $4 million for the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, committed over two years, to support small scale and pilot research projects in advanced manufacturing, benefiting small firms and early stage researchers, allowing them to quickly move to larger scale research or commercialisation
- $20 million under the Cooperative Research Centre – Projects initiative, committed over two years, for larger scale advanced manufacturing research projects of up to $3 million in funding over three years
- $10 million to establish Innovation Labs in South Australia and Victoria to serve industry in a variety of roles including test centre facilities and business capability development, delivered through existing government services like Entrepreneurs’ Programme, Industry Growth Centres and Austrade
- $5 million to maintain engineering excellence by investing in student research at universities, technology institutions and in industry to continue the flow of highly trained engineers to the automotive design and engineering sector
- $13.5 million tariff reduction on imported vehicle prototypes and components used by Australian motor vehicle design and engineering services that operate in a global network.
These initiatives, together with the tax cuts for around 3.2 million Australian businesses, will help our manufacturing businesses to modernise their operations, create new opportunities and new jobs, and sell their smart, new products to the world.
Our measures are enabling Australian manufacturers to evolve to high value manufacturing based on smart means of production and higher value adding products will be able to participate fully in a competitive global market place.
