329 Thomas Street
Dandenong, Victoria
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The $251 million Enterprise Connect network is pivotal to the innovation policy the Government took to the last election.
Enterprise Connect consists of manufacturing and innovation centres around the country dedicated to giving small and medium-sized businesses better access to new ideas and technologies.
Businesses can take this knowledge and use it to become more innovative, efficient, productive and competitive.
Challenges
Australian manufacturers have been facing long-term challenges like climate change and the rise of low-cost competitors for quite a while.
Now they also face the challenge of a global economic slowdown.
International competition has never been more cut-throat and consumer and community expectations have never been higher.
In my view, we should be going out and meeting these challenges head on.
That means investing in the skills, infrastructure and innovation capacity needed to give Australian industry a fighting chance.
Australia has high living standards and we all want to keep it that way.
It’s hard for us to compete on price alone with countries like India and China.
What we need to be competing on is quality, safety, originality, design, environmental responsibility – all the things you get when you invest in innovation.
That’s the thinking behind Enterprise Connect.
It’s there to build the capacity of firms to create new and better products and services – and to produce them in new and better ways.
It is strengthening individual companies by making them more competitive in increasingly difficult times.
Innovation is the key to steering through the current economic uncertainty and emerging with stronger businesses and a stronger economy.
The centre and its services
The network was launched in May and so far I have had the pleasure of opening Manufacturing Centres in South Australia and Queensland, and an Innovation Centre here in Victoria.
Today it’s Dandenong’s turn.
It makes great sense to locate an Enterprise Connect Manufacturing Centre here in what truly is Victoria’s manufacturing heartland.
As well as providing great services itself, the centre will act as a gateway to the wider innovation system.
For example, I’m delighted to announce that the Victorian Manufacturing Centre will also be home to an officer from the Industry Capability Network.
We hope to make similar arrangements with Austrade and CSIRO in the near future.
This will give firms using the centre access to research and advisory capabilities that are second to none.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests there are 4,000 small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in Victoria.
We want to reach as many of them as possible.
The South East Melbourne Manufacturers' Alliance is in the same building, so it shouldn’t be too hard to hook up with businesses in this region – but of course we are casting our net much wider than that.
We already have thirteen Enterprise Connect business advisors on the job in metropolitan Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Mildura and Albury-Wodonga.
By the end of September they had received 324 applications for business reviews – including forty-four from firms in the City of Greater Dandenong itself.
One hundred and twenty-seven firms have already received a business review, and the feedback has been incredibly positive.
Twenty-two firms have so far gone on to be awarded tailored advisory service grants that will help them undertake improvements identified through the business review process.
The total value of these improvement projects is $704,000, of which the Commonwealth is contributing $305,000.
Enterprise Connect is still a work in progress, but with so many individuals and organisations already involved, the results we have seen to date are outstanding.
In fact, the network is up and running in every state, and more than 1,000 firms have applied for or received business reviews – 82 per cent of them manufacturers.
The future
Our aim is to equip Australian industry with the modern techniques it needs to meet today’s challenges and capitalise on tomorrow’s opportunities.
That’s why, for example, we are hosting a series of free workshops around the country to let traditional manufacturing industries know how using biotechnology can boost their business.
The one in Melbourne on the 30th of October will focus on the use of enzymes and other biotechnologies in industrial processing.
The tougher the global economic environment becomes, the more important it is that we get ahead of the pack by embracing new ways of doing things.
Innovation is the key to maintaining jobs and living standards, and Enterprise Connect is one of our key instruments for accelerating innovation.
The Victorian Manufacturing Centre is a critical part of the network, and it is my pleasure to declare it open.