Page 37 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec19-Jan20

TOP 40 CONTEXT
37
DECEMBER 2019 – JANUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
TOP 40 CRACKS $12 BILLION
IN TURNOVER FOR SECOND
YEAR RUNNING
Once again, ADM’s annual Top 40 Defence contractors and Top 20 SMEs has some staggering headline figures and surprises for the Defence community.
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
TO CLARIFY, rankings are based purely on turnover earned during the calendar year of 2019 in Australia and/or NZ. To qualify as an SME, ADM relies on the definition used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics; a business must have 200 or less full-time equivalent staff members. An ANZ SME must meet that mark plus be owned and op- erated in Australia/NZ, independent of a foreign-owned parent company.
The total turnover of the list is slightly down from the 2018 figure of $12.7 billion to $12 billion this year, a 5.5 per cent drop. This figure would have been a record-breaking effort again had Raytheon Australia been included.
In a first for the company, Raytheon Australia declined to participate this year. Usually comfortably ranking in the Top 5, the gap left by the company is palpable. Raytheon
Australia declined numerous offers to explain the change in policy but ADM suspects that the ownership change at the global level with the United business has played a part.
In a first for Top 40 (see Table 1), the three biggest com- panies in the land, in rank order of BAE Systems Australia, Lendlease and Thales Australia, all cracked the billion- dollar mark. Once again, ASC remains the only Australian owned and operated prime without a foreign owned parent. That being said, EOS is now at number 15 and with the addition of EM Solutions at the end of 2019, will be one to watch in the 2020 list.
ABOVE: The Hunter class frigate program has hit some major milestones this year.
BAE SYSTEMS