I ended my last Chairman’s Report with the words ‘I believe the next two years will tell the tale of if and how we will be able to stand on our own feet financially in 2015’.  If you have been following the press on the international business situation you will be aware that the future financial and manufacturing outlook in North America and Europe is anything but certain and is likely to become very difficult.  While our CRC history started with a focus on mainly assisting Australian industry, it moved over time to having an international focus as well.  Today this focus is hardly surprising given that our two major commercial end-user participants in the CRC, EADS and PETRONAS, are international players.  Your Chairman is a Board member of other high technology companies and is very aware that the combination of international business uncertainty and the high exchange rate of the Australian dollar have contracted their businesses in some cases to the extent of them having to reduce their professional staffing numbers.

By contrast, our commercial operating company, Australian Composite Structures Australia (ACS Australia), has had a small increase in staff after we secured new international contracts.  The underlying reason is I believe obvious if you consider the pedigree of the developed business.  There is good objective evidence that technological collaboration is easiest and cheapest if the collaborating entities are in the same geographical location; every step away from collocation, e.g.  same suburb, same city, same language, same country, different country, different language, etc., adds another level of difficulty in collaboration.  So the question arises, why are we doing better than other collaboration-based high technology companies with a distinctly international program?

The answer is that our CRC in the past and now our spin-off, ACS Australia, have something that these companies can’t get closer to home.  That is, we have unique capabilities and intellectual property, but particularly ‘know how’ or intellectual capital of a group of scientists and engineers who have worked consistently together over 20 years on advanced composite technology.  To put it another way, we have a world class team with a world class track record in advanced composite technology.  It is my opinion that we should lift our profile at home and abroad to face the uncertain times that are in prospect.  Our CEO does a magnificent job representing us overseas in international scientific fora and commercially: it seems to me likely that we will have to do even more of this work in the years ahead, particularly in developing overseas commercial markets for our expertise.  We have unique capabilities in a developing area of technology and we have to make the most of it to secure our future.

Dr Bill Schofield, AM
Chairman