Page 66 - Australian Defence Magazine March 2019

FROM THE SOURCE
ROBERT NIOA
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
Australian Defence industry is known for those 20-year, overnight success stories. NIOA is one such case. From humble beginnings, the Queensland headquartered business now has a healthy stable of Defence programs under its belt with its sights set on further expansion. ADM Managing Editor caught up with MD Robert Nioa to explore the company’s rise.
Robert Nioa
Artillery Ammunition contract, the 81mm mortar contract and we’ve demonstrated an ability to establish Australian manufactur- ing capability.
We’re also supplying the NZ Defence Forces with their 9mm side arm (Glock) and their sniper rifles (Barrett). De- fence, I think, has got a high degree of comfort in all of those programs and how we’ve delivered.
ADM: The last 12 months has seen a lot happening in the Defence space for you at both Mulwala and Benalla. Can you walk us through those interests?
NIOA: Even though it’s become apparent in the last 12 months that we’ve been of- fered and taken up a tenancy at Benalla, we’ve been working for 10 years on getting access to the Benalla ammunition site.
That effort started in the lead up to the DMMA program (Domestic Munitions Manufacturing Arrangements tender) which ultimately then was cancelled. In the years after, we kept engaging with Defence as they started to reassess what they do af- ter the end of the interim arrangements they put in place there. We’ve been work- ing for 10 years to bring new capability to the GOCO (government owned contractor operated) site.
What has occurred is we have been of- fered an interim tenancy between now and 30 June 2020 and we have taken up that tenancy. We are now on site and we have our own developed safety systems that are approved for the site. We have staff working at Benalla right now.
Just announced, we have been invited to discuss a long term tenancy which we ex- pect would be a 10 year plus tenancy at the Benalla site.
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The Brisbane head office of NIOA has expanded
to include a range of facilities.
Managing Director of NIOA
ADM: NIOA has been working across both the civil (both sporting/commercial and law enforcement) and military mar- kets for some time now. Can you give us an overview of how these markets make up your business?
NIOA: The last couple of years, we’ve been about 50 per cent commercial and 50 per cent government. We divide the govern- ment into police and military and the com- mercial is the licensed firearms market in Australia and a little bit in NZ.
With our future contracts that we’ve now won with Defence, the business mix is shifting to two-thirds Defence and one-third commercial. There’s significant growth in the company occurring around the Defence portfolio and we think that’s going to continue to grow as well. The commercial business as a percentage of our overall business will reduce but the actual sales won’t be reducing, it’s just that the business is growing overall with more of a Defence portfolio.
ADM: Since we last spoke in 2013, what has been the growth path for the compa- ny since then?
NIOA: Since 2013 I’d say that we’ve defi- nitely established ourselves as a trusted prime contractor to Defence. Even though we’re an
Australian owned SME, when people talk about primes they generally associate that with a foreign owned multinational. I think we’ve made that transition. In that Defence relationship, they very much see us as a trust- ed prime now. That’s a very different place to be in this year compared to 2013 where we were really just establishing our credentials in that prime contractor role.
We’ve delivered programs successfully, we’ve won several major contracts. The Land 40 contract we delivered successfully as a prime contractor in the weapons space. In the ammunition space we’ve won the Major Munitions Contract, the Land 17 Future
66 | March 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au