Page 26 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2021

26 DEFENCE BUSINESS
PARTNERING
JUNE 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FIGURE 1
CHALLENGES FOR PARTNERSHIP – TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Takes too Long
by delivering capability to the warfighter
Extreme Complexity
$
Generate profi able Defence revenue
Closed Shop
project and product managers) don’t have time to search out new or emerging Australian Defence industrial capa- bility, coach businesses to be better Defence suppliers, or unlock how potentially thousands of businesses can sup- port Defence.
The issues that we at ADROITA hear each and every day about the challenges facing Australian businesses and emerging Defence industry, and the Department of De- fence as well, can be distilled into three issues, as shown above in Figure 1.
PROBLEM 1:
THE COST (TIME AND MONEY) IS TOO HIGH
Most Australian businesses end up at a stand-still when first considering Defence because they know it is going to take time and money, and they lack confidence about how to make it happen in a way that will make the investment worthwhile. Before they start investing, they need to know that Defence is a goer for them.
Australian businesses recognise that accessing new markets takes time, and they are willing to invest time where there is potential. However, in the Defence industry sector they have witnessed decades of off-shoring capabil- ity, rhetoric about investment in Australia, and a lack of access to the market because of the high barriers to entry or historic behaviours of Defence and global primes.
In addition, some of the investment required to improve the ability to deliver to Defence comes at a premium cost. Whilst there are generous grants available, businesses still need sufficient capital to invest in their people, knowl- edge, infrastructure and all the other industry capability elements Defence requires. Not every business has this within reach, and the investment market in Australia has traditionally ignored the potential of Defence industry.
Conversely, Defence remains rightly concerned about achieving value for money from each and every cent of tax payers’ dollars that it spends – ultimately, long mobilisa- tion time frames cost the tax payer more, and project de- lays compromise the warfighting end user.
The cost and time to mobilise latent Defence capability in industry has historically been too high for either Aus- tralian businesses or Defence to move forward.
A CASE IN POINT – GME
GME is a VHF/UHF radio, emergency beacon, and antenna systems privately held Australian manufacturer with a 60-year history of delivering to the commercial and consumer sector in Australia, with 35 year history of export. In fact, if you have a CB radio in your 4WD, or a marine radio or EPIRB in your boat, there’s a good chance it was made by GME.
GME started exploring Defence in 2019, creating a Defence strategy for the business. Through a SME partnership, it assessed its capability and capacity in terms of the Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities and identified that whilst Defence is unlikely to buy off- the-shelf GME products, what is appealing about GME to Defence and other industry players in the Defence ecosystem is that GME:
• is an Australian company with an Australian board,
owned and operated within Australia
• has an on-shore manufacturing capability for RF
systems at a scale found nowhere else in Australia
• has grown a radio frequency and software defined radio design engineering capability in Sydney, NSW of
40 or so highly qualified and skilled engineers
• has an in-house production team
• owns and protects substantial Intellectual Property with respect to its RF products and designs
• has a ‘clean’ supply chain
• has invested in infrastructure and facilities that can be
modified to improve facilities security, and expanded to
meet increased production requirements
• offers the ability to on-shore production that is currently undertaken in the UK or US for secure communications
systems
• and has the ability to rapidly prototype electronics
components in-country.
In just over 12 months after committing to the effort
required to mobilise into Defence, GME has grown a number of new revenue streams, is undertaking work to be certified into global supply chain programs of key prime contractors, has conducted design and prototyping with a critical partner, and has signed its first multi-million dollar Defence contract in the C4EDGE program.
GME’s success is also a great outcome for Defence, as it has partnered at multiple levels across the Defence ecosystem and proven to unlock sovereign capability that wasn’t previously available in Australia.