While its accepted that manufacturing will never assume the same authority it once had, a new era of higher-skilled manufacturing employment has arrived. But the new manufacturers are employed to work with, and have a deep understanding of, the machines. Its true that we have seen companies downsized because of the introduction of new technologies. But the firms that are producing those new technologies are expanding. Strongest growth has been in production of computer, telecommunication and electronic components, chemicals, car components and some food products.
Contract manufacturing is the latest trend - the outsourcing of work to specialists.
This field is growing at more than 30 per cent a year internationally. Liverpool-based contract manufacturer Bluegum Group, which has in recent years taken over the outsourced electronics manufacturing operations of IBM Australia and Alcatel, is one of the most successful examples of this in Australia. It has grown from a very small company to one employing more than 700 in two years. While Alcatel outsourced its electronics work, the company held on to its Port Botany submarine cable plant, which recently employed 100 new manufacturing staff. They are mostly production workers, mechanical and electrical engineers, employed to make the cable for a 29,000-kilometre undersea cable link, Southern Cross, between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.