Lang says Australlia needs onshore technology

https://www.manmonthly.com.au/features/australian-manufacturers-need-onshore-technology/

Industrial-scale additive manufacturer, Titomic has been actively involved in pushing for further investment opportunities for SMEs.

Titomic executive chairman Jeff Lang. Image credit: Titomic
Titomic executive chairman Jeff Lang is involved in pushing for a capital growth fund for small to medium businesses.
The Business Growth Fund aims to create a private sector-owned fund to provide ongoing equity for small businesses across a range of sectors, with investment from Australian banks and superannuation funds.
The model is expected to follow similar measures set by international precedents, such as in the UK, where the Business Growth Fund established in 2011 invested $2.7 billion into various sectors across the economy.
Lang is currently working with small businesses on how they could potentially implement the federal government’s stimulus packages.
“In the manufacturing sector, it is estimated 85 per cent of all manufacturing businesses are SMEs,” he said.
“But unfortunately, when the federal government approaches key advisors on what to do in manufacturing, they never go to the SMEs. I find that disturbing to me as a proud Australian, why we continue to push this agenda.”
Lang said Titomic is “front and centre” pushing for small- to medium-sized enterprises and is involved in lobbying the cause in Canberra.
“What I’m concerned about with the current stimulus packages is the money will go to the normal regulars that will not feed its way down to SMEs and the general public,” he said.
According to Lang, the government needs to reconsider how to reinvigorate the sector, or risk losing sovereign capability.
He believes Australia is in a position to do an economic reset to build that capability.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for Australia to reset what we actually do in the country and to reinvigorate our manufacturing, but very strongly into two principles,” he said.
“The first principle being taking advantage of local resources that we have, and more importantly, using advanced technologies to really push front and centre on the global stage.”
Lang was recently in discussions with the German government, who look upon Australia for mineral resources. He said there is an export opportunity around “green steel” that is produced from hydrogen.
“Australia has the best renewable resources, and if we look heavily upon that in the future, Australia could be producing our iron ore from hydrogen to create green steel,” Lang said.
“Instead of selling our dirt, we should really start building value chains around those commodities, and then build local manufacturing industry around that, too.”
He believes it is important that Australia starts replacing cheap labour with advanced technologies and automation processes, which has proven to include more workers overseas.
“We’ve painted is this dystopian where automation and AI is going to take people’s jobs away,” Lang said.
He said according to a study in Germany, when a robot is placed into a manufacturing centre, it creates 3.6 jobs.
Titomic is also involved in encouraging long-term collaborations between industry, universities and research centres.
“It’s in a transitional period, but we’ve got to get to the point where the top students in Australia getting graduated are ready to enter into the workforce,” Lang said.
“I think it’s wrong for Australians to say that Australia doesn’t have the capability to do advanced manufacturing.
According to Lang, one of Australia’s biggest problems is that although the country is really good at developing advanced technologies, the labour costs of manufacturing are high compared to China and other developing economies.
“What we’re not good at doing is being competitive on mass production against China and these other guys, where they’ve got cheap labour.”
Lang hopes Titomic is setting an example of how to take advantage of local resources and apply them for the production of advanced technologies.
“We can really create an independence within our sovereign capability to be a standalone country that’s self-sufficient,” he said. “I think that’s really important that Australia looks forward into that area.”