The Brains Behind NSW Exports

More than just the sparkling image of Sydney Harbour, New South Wales is a state also characterised by its resources and innovation.

The Sydney skyline—featuring the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Centrepoint Tower—is as much an icon for Australia as it is for New South Wales’ capital city. Surprisingly, however, tourism doesn’t even rate in the top 10 list of NSW exports. Number one is coal at almost $5 billion, which more than doubles revenue received from the second biggest export, aluminium.

The diversity of exports is something David Howard, Austrade’s NSW/ACT state manager, believes makes NSW exports hard to define. Asked what he sees as NSW’s strengths, he lists financial services, technology, wine, mining services, agribusiness and fashion as some of the more visible industries but concedes: “I struggle to name one particular strength from NSW: we have a lot of strength in a lot of diverse industries.”

“There’s a big spread of what we do because of the size of the population,” agrees Peter Mace, NSW general manager at the Australian Institute of Export. Mace believes NSW excels in providing services, from architecture and education to financial services and insurance, mentioning companies like Macquarie Bank and QBE Insurance. “A lot of the head offices of companies are Sydney-based.”

Howard says Sydney’s position as a global city does put financial services as a key NSW industry over other states. “Financial services is an area where I think there is a distinction in NSW. There’s more focus in Sydney than anywhere else. Melbourne might want to challenge that, but on the numbers it’s a hard one to challenge,” he says.

And while both acknowledge the huge coal industry centred on the Hunter Valley area, making Newcastle one of the busiest ports in the world, Mace believes that advanced manufacturing is making its mark in the state. “You have gaming machines by Aristocrat, high-tech food processing and companies like Resmed and Cochlear, two innovative manufacturers both from New South Wales,” he notes.
Cochlear, which took out the 2007 Australian Exporter of the Year Award, has since joined other NSW exporters like educational institution University of NSW and tourism provider Bridgeclimb in the Export Hall of Fame, reserved for exporters that have won their category three times at national level. The fact that NSW often dominates the awards is testament to its strength in exporting across a range of sectors.

Howard believes that NSW’s Department of State and Regional Development (DSRD) does well to support businesses and provide relevant programs, including some in partnership with Austrade. “DSRD does a good job helping organisations get to point where they’re export capable and then we have a program called TradeStart,” he says. “DSRD is also very good at supporting NSW companies in terms of getting them offshore and in missions. We led a financial services mission to New York in June, in conjunction with the NSW government. We thought we were just helping people connect to a market, but it turned out there were real business connections made, and real opportunities developed quickly. It was an astounding success.