TRANSCRIPT
Phil Bourke: The manufacture of passenger motor vehicles in Australia will finish by
the end of 2017.
Austrade has been working with many of those companies over recent years to help them access
new customers in automotive, new markets in automotive and even diversify out of automotive
into other sectors.
Nicola Watkinson: The automotive sector in India is really going through a lot of rapid
growth.
We’re up to about three million passenger vehicles per year and India is predicted to
become the fourth largest automotive market in the next 12 months.
One of the interesting things is that there is a lot of room for growth still in India.
At the moment only 18 out of every 1,000 Indians actually possesses a motor vehicle, and in
addition to that what we’re seeing is that the Modi government through it’s Make In
India campaign is driving the automotive sector to actually move into the export market as
well.
So that’s going to create even further impetus for growth.
Greg Wallis: In Indonesia there’s been growth of the automotive industry of about 20% a
year since 2006.
In Thailand about two million vehicles are produced a year and in Malaysia there are
about 800 components manufacturers in that country, so that by the year 2020 we believe
there’ll be something like 100 million consumers in ASEAN.
Phil Bourke: A number of global vehicles, all their research and development and design
have been done in Australia.
Those skills can now be taken to the world and we find, particularly from the Indian
market and the Chinese market, they are demanding those sorts of skills from the Australian
supply chain.
Nicola Watkinson: The Indian OEMs are now really focused on improving their competitiveness
in a way that they weren’t even five years ago, and that includes both new product competitiveness
to make their offering more attractive to the consumer, as well as process improvements
to make themselves more efficient and cost effective.
Greg Wallis: There is still some demand for specific components which we can export to
ASEAN.
There’s a growing use of off road and four wheel drive vehicles by the public and that’s
creating a demand for the sorts of products that Australia has manufactured for many,
many years - lightweight materials for vehicles, clean car technologies and specific design
capabilities for individual components.
Phil Bourke: In less developed supply chains, particularly now in Asia, that design capability
is still with the OEM, still with the vehicle manufacturer.
However, within the next two or three model cycles that design capability will require
-- well the OEMs will require to be embedded within the component supply chain.
So the Australian companies now have that unique window of opportunity to take their
design skills into equivalent component manufacturers within the Asian region.
Greg Wallis: They’re making cars to be shipped around the region and around the world.
So the market is much, much bigger and to get into that market, generally speaking,
you need to be there.
Mark Albert: One of the key things when you realise you’re part of the global supply
chain is you need to keep making improvements of your product.
What is it that the customer’s looking for, what is that small improvement that places
you ahead of the pack.
It’s not always on price.
Yes, your quality has always got to up there, and then they’re looking for those other
things that are on the fringes that make you a different supplier.
Australia is less than 1% of global automotive manufacturing.
If we can survive on 1% in Australia, all we need is less than one or 1% again and we’ve
doubled our business.
That’s a huge growth, so we don’t need much to win business in Australia to be successful.
Greg Wallis: We have staff that work for Austrade across the region that understand this market
very well.
They speak the language, they know the manufacturers, they know the OEMs and Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier
3 suppliers.
So those are the critical things that a manufacturer needs to know in the context they need to
have in order to find their opportunity within that market.
Mark Albert: MTMs, two mainstreams of non-automotive business and automotive.
We intend to stay in both markets.
We’re currently quoting on volumes in the global vehicle platforms of five million plus
units.
That now makes us think differently about how we’re going to manufacture those products
and in the non-automotive space we’ve got more than a handful of products that we’re
looking at and talking to new manufacturers about opportunities.
So we see a very bright future and I hope other industries and suppliers see a very
bright future also.
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