From the CEO’s Desk
Read the latest edition of the KIC member newsletter – InFocus. Each month we look forward to sharing you the news, activities, and events across the KIC. Each month we look forward to sharing with you the news, activities, and events across the KIC.
Welcome to the July edition of KIC InFocus.
After a month of mixed news for local industry, I thought I would take a different approach to my message this month. Apologies in advance to Charles Dickens.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch incredulity.
It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
It is emerging industries with great expectations, it is traditional industries, many decades old, facing uncertainty.
It was the tale of two cities.
The past month has had its fair share of highs and lows. There continues to be great expectations for our emerging industries, and optimism continues to build for projects such as defence industries, renewables, and advanced manufacturing.
Construction on several major projects across the Kwinana Industrial Area continues at a pace, and excitement is building about several more being planned.
On the other hand, a number of the industries that have been the bedrock of the Kwinana Industrial Area for decades face less certain futures – placed into care and maintenance in the hope that market conditions will soon improve to allow them to resume operations.
We were saddened this month to learn of the news that BHP had decided to temporarily close its nickel operations across the state, including the Kwinana refinery. Our thoughts are with the hundreds of workers at the Nickel West Refinery. We will be doing all we can to support BHP and its team through this transition. The decision coincided with Alcoa saying goodbye to many of its loyal and long serving workers.
These tough decisions highlight that our local industries are subject to price fluctuations, market volatilities and global competition.
While we must continually evolve and adapt to these ever-changing markets, we also need the policies, regulations and infrastructure needed to help local industry grow, prosper and succeed.
Government must work with local industry to create the environment that allows industry to flourish. This includes investing in Kwinana by fixing local roads, removing blockages at our ports, removing excessive regulation and inefficient decision making, and supporting innovation and efforts to decarbonise.
It’s why our ‘Industry Futures’ document matters and why government needs to listen. We successfully launched our vision for local industry at the start of the month and are now pushing all levels of government for action.
KIC will continue to advocate strongly on these issues on behalf of members as we all have great expectations for the Western Trade Coast.