PRESS RELEASE
Wages breakout imminent? Is this the death blow for manufacturing?
The engineering skills shortage appears to be worsening, and to retain and attract experienced design engineers leading design firm Applidyne Australia has had to boost salaries. Managing Director Paul van de Loo stated that “this is due to competition for skills with the mining industry; we have lost 3 engineers to mining in the last few weeks. For a small firm this is a big hit. It appears that there is a two-track economy, with the hard hit manufacturing sector now struggling to retain personnel in the face of strong demand from the mining sector.”
Applidyne is an award winning consulting engineering design firm based in Adelaide and was established in 1993. It designs bespoke products and machines for most sectors including automotive, medical and healthcare, building products and the renewable energy sector as well as for the mining industry. As Mr van de Loo points out “sectors such as automotive have been waning for many years, whilst medical and renewable energy sectors are on the rise. The problem however is that the lack of skills availability is accelerating the demise of the automotive components industry whilst hampering the ability of rising sectors to develop – and this is a double whammy in the strong Australian dollar environment as these industries rely on exports to grow. Many of our clients are feeling the pinch.”
Compounding the problem is the decreased capability of the available engineers. As Mr van de Loo states “engineers with product design experience are highly sought after in the mining sector, but engineers with mining experience do not have the skill set to innovate and generate intellectual property in sophisticated technology areas such as medical products and sustainable energy systems. Unfortunately graduates entering the mining sector do not gain the skills required to service these high value technology areas and so are effectively lost to the skills base.”
To address the skills shortage Applidyne is actively recruiting engineers from overseas, particularly countries with a strong technology development base such as the UK, South Africa and Europe.
For further information contact:
Paul van de Loo
Managing Director
Applidyne Australia Pty Ltd
paulv@applidyne.com.au
Ph 08 8234 8211
www.applidyne.com.au
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