Gold Coast Industry 4.0 Business and Investment Project

The Better Cities Group was commissioned in early 2020 by Regional Development Australia to deliver the Gold Coast Industry 4.0 Business and Investment Project has highlighted significant Industry 4.0 capability on the Gold Coast across a number of sectors including advanced manufacturing, health and medical technology, space and aerospace, textiles, additive manufacturing, food technology, sport and film.

In many cases this capability is developing in clusters where organisations are located within proximity to each other and are using similar advanced technologies in similar industries. It has also highlighted that different sectors are leveraging off advances made in one sector for the benefit of another.

Gold Coast Industry 4.0 businesses are committed to adopting new advanced technologies to increase productivity and there are growing connections between universities and industry to leverage Industry 4.0 capability.

Whilst the adoption of advanced technology was already well under way, COVID-19 has fast tracked its adoption and in turn, accelerated the need for a workforce with skill sets aligned with Industry 4.0. This has been demonstrated at a local and national scale.

COVID-19 has also led to an increased expectation of sovereign capability and supply chain independence and subsequently to an increased push to build maturity in the manufacturing sector.

Industry 4.0 adoption is critical to drive competitiveness and productivity. COVID-19 has catalysed this requirement and the opportunity exists to ensure that there is an appropriately trained workforce to meet these requirements, enable Industry to adopt best practice advanced technology adoption and build digital and physical supply chain connections.