Australian citizens have been increasingly optimizing battery storage in their businesses and residences. Because of this, there’s been a strong surge of demand to produce more of it.
Moreover, proponents are convincing industries not to follow the mining boom’s mistakes and grab the $7.4 billion opportunities for the manufacturing industry of local batteries. However, is this ambition realistic and attainable? Or merely nationalistic?
In this case, a company in Melbourne that started as a small business four years ago already has fifty local employees making battery storage for homes.
The bigger lithium systems of PowerPlus Energy are often installed inside off-grid residences that already utilize solar energy. The company’s founder, Bradley Paton, has always been passionate about employing local workers.
Among the fifty employees working inside the company’s three-thousand-square-meter factory today are school leavers, people who are embarking on another career opportunity, Bradley Paton’s family friends, and grownup children.
Moreover, most of their employees perform the kind of work that can be learned onsite and only require minimal skills, such as assembling cabinets, electronics, and electrical parts.
One of those fifty workers is Faye Brittain. She is tasked to assemble battery packs inside one of the factory’s wings.
She used to be a stay-at-home mom, but she grabbed the opportunity to have the interview. Thankfully, she got hired, and now she’s already contributing to the company’s daily operations.
However, hiring local workers can boil down to an obvious cost. After all, it’s undoubtedly more affordable if the company outsourced its operations to more significant economies that offer more affordable workforces that know a lot about battery technology.
In this case, Mr. Paton stated that they would be looking forward to saving up to thirty to forty percent of their workforce budget to have China-made cabinets. Moreover, he also admitted that they are competing against industries with higher government support levels, lower wages, and where tariffs are there to sustain their industries.
Unfortunately, it’s a familiar story to most business people, and people have also heard about vehicle manufacturing companies that were pushed offshore during the past decades. With this information alone, entrepreneurs from all over the world can assume that there are indeed gaps and limitations in local battery industries.