What will future manufacturing jobs really look like?

At 10am on every work day for 40 years, the 14 staff at The Natural Bedding Company have gathered for a communal morning tea. Owner Andrew McCaig realises the time-honoured tradition is becoming rarer.

“It used to be standard, but perhaps it hasn’t stood the test of time everywhere,” he says.

Neither have local manufacturing businesses like McCaig’s, which is based in Sydney’s now gentrified inner west.

“Back in the early 90s, you could get anything in Marrickville due to the number and variety of businesses manufacturing here. You just had to walk down one of the many laneways, and you would find a vast array of businesses manufacturing different weird and wonderful things as well as the ordinary things,” McCaig notes.

If the current Australian government has anything to do with it, we’ll soon be taking Australia back towards the days when manufacturing was a bigger slice of our economy.

The recent federal budget committed $22.7 billion over the next decade to the Future Made in Australia policy – a plan which aims to make Australia a “renewable energy superpower” and to back Australian innovation.

In manufacturing, innovation is a broad term. For McCaig, it comes through creations like the specially designed tables which mean the 700 handmade mattresses his team produces each year don’t need to be made on the floor. In the Future Made in Australia policy, innovation focuses more on facilities and technologies linked to green metals and quantum computing capabilities.

Still, one gets the sense the prime minister would approve of the way this manufacturing business, located in his own electorate, approaches sustainability. At the Natural Bedding Company, reusing and recycling have been prioritised for decades.

Products in the supply chain are carbon-neutral, toxic chemicals are shunned, and offcuts of materials and sawdust are donated to local community projects and community gardens.

”I am fastidious when it comes to making sure that we are sourcing the right – and best – materials,” says McCaig.

While manufacturing at this handcrafted level provides local employment, Australia’s manufacturing industries – and the jobs that come with it – have substantially declined over the last twenty years. According to the ABS Labour Force Survey, employment in the sector is down 118,500 in the last two decades; minus 11.5 per cent.

That’s not to say the jobs aren’t there. The Australian arm of multinational business Kimberly-Clark employs around 400 employees (including contractors) at its Millicent Mill in South Australia, with another 220 employed in its ANZ business.

Looking forward, the manufacturer has both sustainability and diversity firmly in mind.

“In 2023, we reduced our emissions by 30.5 per cent against our 2015 baseline, whilst continuing to explore alternative, renewable energy sources at our Millicent Mill. We’ve also recently achieved 100 per cent waste diversion at the Mill, which is a huge milestone for our business,” says Millicent Mill manager Adam Carpenter.

As a sector, only 29 per cent of manufacturing workers are female, but Carpenter says that they’ve managed to shift the dial on Kimberly-Clark’s South Australian site.

“Back in 2019, we had hired zero women into our production team. To address this, we made a simple but really effective change to our job advertisements. We removed the forklift prerequisite and placed more focus on behaviours rather than just technical skills,” he says.

A local media campaign and a formal referral program for employees also helped spread the word.

“As a result, we’ve seen close to 40 per cent new female recruits in our production team year-on-year, ranging from young graduates to working mums,” says Carpenter.

Unsurprisingly, the organisation is positive about the Australian government’s investment in manufacturing, but says it needs to keep a close eye on the pipeline of workers supporting a greener future.

“We believe that a key part of the energy transition is the electrification of the process, [so] it is crucial that the government considers training and capacity building for electrical trades and electrical/automation engineering,” Carpenter says.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.