Central Coast Manufacturing Capability
Central Coast Industry Connect was commissioned to conduct a study of the Central Coast’s manufacturing capability. The study was to provide an up to date listing of manufacturers in the region and from this to determine its core capability and opportunities to foster its strengths.
Manufacturing on the Central Coast is the second biggest value add sector at $918M* behind Health Care and employs 9526*people (Total employment). It is an important industry to the region and being positioned between the Hunter and the Sydney basin is a prime location to take advantage of this.
The top three industry sectors for the region by sector identified by the study by numbers were:
- Building and Construction Products at 32% of the manufacturers identified.
- Engineering products and services 27%
- Food and Beverage manufacturers 11%
The results are somewhat surprising with the supply of building and construction products being the top sector. Within the Building and Construction products there were two standout contributors; Kitchen and Joinery at 40% and Window, door and screen manufacturing at 18%. Given the current boom in housing and infrastructure spending, it would be expected that this will to continue to grow.
The number of engineering shops recorded was also a surprise. 111 engineering related businesses were identified. In 2012 Central Coast Manufacturing Connect conducted a Mapping the Connections exercise in the steel fabrication industry and the outlook portrayed by the participants was grim. But based on the current findings it is still looking positive albeit from discussion with some engineering shops it is difficult trading.The biggest two sectors within engineering were steel fabrication at 48% and Equipment manufacture at 19% of the total identified engineering firms. Machine shops were third at 13%.
For all categories identified the size of manufacturers would be classed as small. Although we don’t have employment numbers for all manufacturers typically the numbers we have are between 1 and 10.
