27 Jun
Navigating Global Trade: Insights from Austrade’s David Lawson
In the latest Global Trade Made Easy Podcast episode, Tejas Oza discusses the evolving trade landscape with David Lawson of Austrade. They delve into the strategies for overcoming distance in international trade, key growth drivers, and the role of Free Trade Agreements.
Key takeaways from the episode include:
- Austrade’s global network of 110 offices empowers Australian exporters to expand their reach into overseas markets.
- Growth drivers are fueled by demand from Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, regional alliances such as Quad & IPEF, and Australia’s abundant resources.
- Why businesses are encouraged to balance inventory, manage cash flow, and maintain customer engagement.
- FTAs, like those with India & UK, have enabled enterprises to penetrate new markets, exemplified by Fletcher International Exports.
- Austrade’s Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) and facilitated participation in international trade shows offer added benefits for businesses.
- China’s reopened market provides an opportunity for a stronger presence at the upcoming China International Import Exhibition (CIIE) in Shanghai.
- Tech advancements in artificial intelligence, blockchain, and machine technologies are fostering efficiency and productivity in exports.
To explore these topics in detail, tune into this insightful podcast episode.
David Lawson leads a team of experts at Austrade to provide support and assistance to exporters in diversifying international markets, prepositioning inventory, and maximising benefits of trade agreements like USFDA, EUFDA, and Hector (India-Australia). Exporters can receive assistance by calling Austrade’s hotline at 132 878 or visiting austrade.gov.au for sector/country-specific information.
Episode 4: Austrade 2
[00:00:00] Tejas Oza: Hello and welcome to the Global Trade Made Easy Podcast. In this podcast, we speak to the global trade leaders, innovators, and influencers from around the world and Australia. We talk about ideas that can disrupt your organization, industry, or even careers. So let’s dig in.
Hello everybody. I’m your host, Tejas Oza and we are back on Global Trade Made Easy podcast.
So today once again, we have David Lawson, who is the assistant general manager of the Trade division at Austrade which is Australian Trade and Investment Commission, which is a federal government organization. David, welcome to the show again.
[00:00:38] David Lawson: Hey, thanks Tejas, great to get back and have a bit of a chat.
Last time we talked about the bread and butter of of trade. Let’s sink our teeth into some some meat and potatoes and maybe a splash of wine to to top it off at the end. Look forward to chatting with you today.
[00:00:55] Tejas Oza: Absolutely. Same here, David. Thanks a lot. Thanks again for joining. So let’s talk about maybe little bit about the Austrade once again, just to get the scene right when people know what Austrade is all about.
Would you mind telling us a little bit about Austrade before we go further.
[00:01:12] David Lawson: Excellent. Sure. Thanks. Thanks Tejas. So I worked for the Australian Trade and Investment Commission and as Tejas you just pointed out I’m in the trade division. There’s also an investment division.
As Austrade also looks after the visitor economy, tourism being another major export source of exports for Australia. And we also have an export market development grant, so a funding program within Australia, but. We’ve been around for a long time in fact, the first trade commissioners were the service was set up in 1933, and the principle is that we help Australian export exporters export.
We help Australian exporters overcome the tyranny of distance by introducing customers in overseas markets through our overseas network. We’ve got a good footprint here in Australia. In, in all of the states, we partner with state governments through a program called Trade Start. So that whether you’re in the cities or in rural and regional Australia, there’s an export advisor or a, or an a global engagement manager who can help your business understand.
How to get into foreign markets. And then we have a great network offshore. We’ve got around about 110 offices around the world. And our staff offshore are working with customers or potential investors who might be looking for a commercial solution from Australia. So that’s in, in a nutshell.
Over the last few years, our focus, and especially in the area that I look after which is helping ag food and consumer exporters, we’ve been really focused on helping our ag and food exporters primarily overcome some of the big disasters, frankly, that have have really made things difficult for Australian exporters.
There were two things. Covid obviously disrupted our supply chains and our ability to get all the aircraft stopped flying. So our ability to get our fresh produce into market was seriously curtailed. But also we had the impact of geopolitical events and specifically, China closed stores to a lot of our, high high value food and agricultural products.
And also. There’s the impact of things like the Ukrainian war which really upset international supply chain. So there’s been a really big impact and our job in Australia for the last few years has been to really help Australian Ag and food exporters diversify into new markets, find new customers in new countries and find out the best channel to market for Australian products. So it’s been a, it’s been a busy time, but a really successful time as well. It’s been great to be a part of that too.
[00:04:47] Tejas Oza: Yeah, David, I can totally second that because we have a number of clients who actually get help from Austrade. Great. And we know that they benefit so much from the Austrade’s different programs.
So I can vouch for it.
[00:05:02] David Lawson: Yep. That’s good to hear.
[00:05:04] Tejas Oza: Absolutely. Can I ask you let’s go a little bit deeper into Austrade programs, et cetera. But before that let’s talk about what do you see are the biggest growth drivers in the Australian exports as you’re helping the exporters right now?
[00:05:21] David Lawson: Yeah. Look, the biggest growth drivers the biggest growth driver is really overseas demand and in our nearest neighbors in, in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, obviously you’ve got long-term growth of economy but also growth of population in our near in our near neighbors, in near Asian markets.
That’s probably one of the biggest factors that, that influences Australia’s export prospects. We produce, our population is only about 25 million or so in Australia, but we produce enough food for about 70 million people and we were really focused on getting our premium produce into those growth markets as economies grow and, get bigger and become more sophisticated. Their ability to be able to manage supply chains means that we can get better quality produce and we can ensure that produce maintains its really super high quality all the way through to the consumer at, at the end of that whole supply chain.
That’s a really big determinant for growth. The other is we talk about the geopolitical impact such as covid and China closing its doors. We’re really pleased that China’s starting to open its doors, by the way. And the war in the Ukraine. So those are negative things, but they’re also really good positive things that happen as we build and strengthen partnerships with our international partners. That drives demand as well. We talk about orcus and our, our strong or the quad, the strong relationship that we have with countries like Japan, the US and India. That too drives demand.
As we get better and meshed in the supply chains for those key partner countries. The other thing is one of the other big impacts really which makes, which underpins the fact that Australia is such a strong export nation. We are really, truly an exportation is not only the demand side from international markets wanting our high quality products, but also the supply side. We have an abundance. We see this with our mineral resources, with our critical minerals with our energy resources and things like that. So our ability to supply over the last year, 18 months, big climatic disasters. There’ve been floods and things like that. But if you look at the whole of the Australian economy overall, actually it’s been pretty good growing seasons. Good rain across, all of the wheat belts, for example, which means that we’ve had an absolute abundance bumper crops.
Cotton is just, massively which is so massively well endowed with cotton, for example, at the moment. So our ability to supply is also really determining that we can maintain a really strong. Supply chains to, to bigger and further bigger markets and much further afield.
It always boils down to economics, but it’s really weighed in our favor to make us a really strong exporter.
[00:09:32] Tejas Oza: David, this is an excellent summary of all the drivers. So thank you. I think it’s really interesting to. Actually how this whole holistic picture of all the parties.
I have a couple of follow up questions here. Yeah. You mentioned about Quad. I think we are getting a quad meeting in Australia very soon. You, are there any any initiatives, any specific specific programs or specific events where Austrade is participating or of happening within the industry given the quad meeting happening soon?
[00:10:11] David Lawson: Yeah, With regards to specific meetings, we, we tend not to in certain areas. When we are talking about defense matters, for example we have a sizeable defense manufacturing industry and we’re a crucial part for, for international supply chains.
But, when we talk about things like quad, about orcas, whether we talk about the, the general architecture of international trade, things like apec. We were a foundational member for apec. These regional alliances that we have, the strong regional alliances that we have is a lot of emphasis at the moment on I P E F, which is the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which we’re building up here. Now. Australia’s a really good citizen in the world market. We take these relationships really seriously. We invest in building these really strong relationships with partners. We talk about things like the rule of law, strong trade Is really determined by our ability to trust our neighbors and for them to trust us and our commercial partners.
So we really as a, as a whole of government, we really commit to making sure that we’ve got great relationships, that we engage actively in all of these. What they call the, the architecture of relationships the World Trade Organization is, is a, is an interesting organization.
There’s a lot of emphasis on making sure that we are involved and actively helping to negotiate within that World Trade Organization framework for things like the The mechanisms to help resolve disputes. We’ve got a couple of disputes on at the moment. We’ve actually hit pause on one of them, specifically Bali with China.
But being involved in making sure that we are a valued and valuable contributor is a really important part of the international diplomacy, which helps support. Strong export growth by Australian companies.
[00:12:48] Tejas Oza: No. That’s that’s true. I understand that. One more follow up question. We talked about some of the challenges, as well as some of the positive things happening, being the, trade agreements with other countries, et cetera. But talk about the challenges. So one of the challenges is as we can see potentially happening is the global downturn of economies. And potential recession. What are your thoughts around that?
How are, how is Australia being prepared for that?
[00:13:22] David Lawson: Yeah. This is always it’s always an issue to just, we’re actually seeing the first hints perhaps in, in a slow down in the northern hemisphere. Because we are looking very closely at shipping rates. For example and frankly, there is quite a slowdown.
One, one of the really good indicators of the strength of the world economy is the shipping rates. So you look at the number of sailings between Shanghai and Los Angeles. That number is down. So it we it’s getting there. We are seeing a slowdown. Interest rates mean, every country is simultaneously raising interest rates to try and, curb inflation.
We’ve got a lot of pressure on things like real wages. Wages are fixed. Inflation just erodes into our. Into our real wages, and so people are gonna be buying less. How do we prepare for that? We just need to really make sure that we it, it comes down to the micro level.
Everything comes down to the enterprise level, to make sure that you’re keeping a good balance on your inventory. Don’t overproduce, make sure you keep your your cash flow. Keep your payment terms short. And the really important thing in international trade is making sure at the enterprise level, making sure that you’ve got really good engagement with your customers offshore, How’s it going?
What are you seeing? Is the product moving? You haven’t ordered for a month or so, when’s the next container load order gonna come through? What’s slowing it down? How can we help you? Do we need to drop our prices? So really build and maintain that strong discourse, strong personal engagement with your customer and make sure that you’re not oversupplying to a markets that’s gonna collapse underneath you.
[00:15:44] Tejas Oza: Yeah. Yeah, good points. I’m, okay. I’m guessing that the trade free trade agreement that Australia has been working on with various countries, obviously the recent one being with India. Where we have the interim agreement signed, and we are still pushing for the full trade agreement in completion very soon. I’m hoping. And there, there are some other countries we are talking to. So I’m, these are all initiatives where I guess Australia is also being prepared for how do you manage the issue of demand. It is there continuously.
[00:16:27] David Lawson: Good question. Tejas. You’re right, we’re going to, that being a good neighbor and really good partnerships means we can get some really good deals with free trade agreements. Historically, we’ve had some great ones with the US back in, when was that? 2005, 2015. And around then with Japan, Korea with Malaysia and other countries.
Really good quality free trade agreements now. There are two elements to free trade agreements. One is tariffs are dropped and also quotas increase. Now at an enterprise level, when a tariff drops, you need to look at the savings. You’re gonna be passing on savings at the end of the day, the customers gonna be paying less, the tariff dropped, the importing and you need to talk to your importer.
Are. Pass on all of those costs to the consumer, or are you gonna pass some of the costs on and then split the difference with the importer so that you spend more money marketing the product as well. So these kinds of things are really important. You need to prepare for that. And, it’s really exciting to see when those agreements come into place.
The first outcomes. So for example, you cited India and that’s, that, that’s a pretty good agreement. But the in depth negotiations will be continuing. But, I mentioned, let’s get into the meat and potatoes. So one of the really good outcomes for India in fact is lamb. We all have eaten some wonderful India lamb curries, I’m sure.
But, there’s really strong demand from from India for lamb and there’s a really large Australian lamb producer called called Fletcher International Exports or Fletchers. They’re a massive exporter. They were. Preparing for it. And as soon as the agreement opened up, they were really quick to to get into the Indian market.
Fletcher’s is an enormous company. Our biggest exporter lamb exporter there. They’re in a hundred markets around the world. But after the ratification of the agreement, they were the first into the Indian market. And, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Indian the whole Indian.
Retail market is around about, it’s just under about 500 billion US dollars. It’s a massive market. And of that, food is about 340 billion US dollars. This is an enormous market. For that to open up and for Australian companies to get into the Indian market, that’s terrific.
Great opportunity. There’s a whole lot of. Other food products that are gonna be getting getting into the Indian market. Indians I’m told that, Indian men tend to drink spirits and beer and Indian women tend to drink wine. And it’s a big market, but we are really hopeful for some strong growth for Australian wine in the Indian market.
That’s gonna take a little time. And for Australian wine exporters who might be listening to the podcast, u understand the things will take time, but gradually we’ve have to see some good growth in the new market. India’s one but of course, just just recently the Prime Minister.
When he was in the UK meeting with the UK Prime Minister also announced that the uk Australia, UK F T a will come into force on the 29th of May. So at the end of this month. Now that is a, that’s just gonna be another fantastic opportunity. About like 99% of all the food products that go into the UK will have a reduction in tariffs also.
There’ll be a, an increase in the quotas that the UK will allow into in, into Australia. So there’s great prospects there. And so I’m, I understand from DFA that negotiations are continuing, and they’re getting towards the. The tough end of the, of of negotiations with the eu.
And we’re really hopeful for a good announcement later this year about an EU FTA as well. So a lot of really good positive moves for future growth for Australian exports.
[00:21:22] Tejas Oza: Really exciting to know this David. So let’s talk about opportunities. Having spoken about opportunities, about trade agreements, et cetera.
So let’s can I request you to tell us what are the upcoming opportunities, grants or Austrade programs that a Australian exporters actually need to know about so that they can actually leverage all these potential growth options and opportunities?
[00:21:49] David Lawson: Yeah, so for a long, for many years Austrade has the export market development grants. Now, this is it’s a rules-based system that if you’re an Australian, and I’m not gonna explain all the details here, but I do encourage you to look at the austrade gov au website. And if you search for E M D G or export Market Development grants.
There’s a whole lot of details there. It’s designed to help defray some of the costs associated with market development for, for your product. This is a, it, it’s primarily aimed at early stage exporters. So if you’re a large exporter already, it’s not for you.
Chances are, you may already have used the M D G over the years, but it’s really designed to help companies you, do that. It’s it’s designed to help. Defray the costs associated with getting into into new markets and expanding your exports into new markets that’s, a just a blue ribbon grant program that we have.
We so as of recording today, we’re willing to may we just had the budget announced. Our executive is tuning our business plan for next year, and. By the end of this financial year. By the end of June, early July, we’ll have a comprehensive list of the calendar entries for all of the major trade shows that will be supporting around the globe over the next over the next financial year.
Some of those are the big mining shows, for example, to help support our our mine technology. We always participate in the big biotech conferences. We partner with the Australian Department of Defense to go into the big defense trade shows and in, in the ag and food and consumer space, we, we.
Perennially get involved in supporting companies, exhibiting in things like Food Ex in Tokyo, food and Hotel Asia and Singapore Gold Food in Dubai the International Food Exhibition in London. And the private label. Private Label Manufacturers association exhibition in North America.
So these are things that we will be involved in helping support Australian Australian exports. We are also really excited that China’s opening up again. And in fact, just this earlier this month I was, I hosted a major delegation from a trade show that’s called the China International Import Exhibition, c I E.
And this is held in Shanghai every year. It was launched in 2018 by President Xi and I’ve never been there, but my colleagues who have been there say, is it is the biggest trade show in the world, and there’s always really strong interest from Australia. That’ll be back now that the, now that the borders have opened with China and people can travel again.
We see, we expect there’ll be a really big presence for Australia in that trade show in, in, in Shanghai. And speaking about borders being open, customers love to come to Australia and buy, so we work really closely with our overseas network who. Identify supermarket chains, for example, and these big buying conglomerates who haven’t been able to travel down to Australia because their borders are being closed.
They’re coming back and every day we’re seeing more and more people coming into our office or, we are accompanying visitors to come to factories. And they come, they look at the product, they look at the way it’s manufactured, they taste the product. They love it. And they place orders.
So it’s, that these are the kinds of bread and butter things that we’ll be supporting over the coming year as well.
[00:26:45] Tejas Oza: So you mentioned about the EM DG grant you mentioned about how you are helping in global trade expose around the world. You mentioned about the. The global companies visiting Australia for sourcing goods, right?
Yes. How do exporters take advantage of the last one, which you mentioned? If they’re listening to the podcast, if they’re interested in tapping into what you mentioned about global companies coming here, what do they do?
[00:27:15] David Lawson: Okay. Hope everyone has their pen handy. 1, 3, 2, 8, 7, 8. That’s the Austrade hotline.
Of course you can register online. You you can do that anytime day or night. Just get onto the Austrade website and make contact with us. You may already be engaged and you mentioned the beginning of the conversation that a lot of your. A lot of a lot of the people listening today are already clients of Austrade, so reach out, let us know that you are interested.
We do work closely with companies who are engaging with us to make sure that, they’re aware of these thing, these opportunities that are coming, whether it’s offshore or whether buyers are coming. We also work really closely with the state governments who also have. Similar support mechanism.
So you know, if we know that somebody’s coming into any of the states, we’ll reach out and make sure that we really build a first class itinerary for these buyers to make sure that we get the best quality product. The other thing is we really partner closely with the peak industry bodies.
The Industry Association, the Table Grape Growers Association, or the Seafood Industry Association, wine Indu wine Australia or any of those peak bodies to let them know that buyers are coming through and, we work with them to make sure that we can maximize the, the exposure of Australian exporters to buyers that we know who are coming down.
[00:28:55] Tejas Oza: Nice, nice. I’m hoping a lot of people will be taking advantage of this the software. So David you mentioned about overseas companies coming here and looking at, how the things are manufactured, how the products are manufactured, et cetera. And one of the things is becoming important globally is sustainability.
Now, what are the implications? As you see has this moved towards sustainability on the Australian exports?
[00:29:30] David Lawson: Some see sustainability and the extra costs as, compliance as being an impediment. But look, let’s look at it as an opportunity, frankly. Australia is well known.
For the quality of produce that we have. We’re an island nation. We spend a lot of money ensuring that we have really good phytosanitary protections to stop diseases coming into Australia. So that’s really well known. It takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of effort. We’ve all been through customs and as we come into the airports around Australia, and it’s tough, but you know that it’s for a good reason.
So you should always look at sustainability and building sustainable building net zero solutions into your supply chain, for example. So reducing carbon, it, it’s a really good, unique selling point. If you invest in that, it will pay in dividends. And especially when we go into the sophisticated markets such as the eu UK and countries like Japan and Korea and increasingly China as well.
The fact that we’ve gone to the effort of complying with stringent sustainability criteria that that markets might dictate such as eu. Or that we’re ahead of the curve, that we’re setting setting the benchmark for the quality produce that we produce. This, the investment that we make really pays dividends in international markets because we can justify the price premium for our product because it’s There’s some really exciting work, I should say, with things like blockchain, so paddock to plate, continual blockchain verification that, the cow that was growing in that paddock has, not been exposed to any harmful Medications, et cetera, all the way through that.
There’s been a continuous cold chain maintained all the way through. There’s been fully phytosanitary compliant and humane slaughter of the cow packing shipping. So that when scan the the barcode there in the supermarket chain on the other side of the planet, You can be reassured that this is a really good quality piece of meat.
You know that’s the kinda investment that, that Australia is making to ensure that we are, well known for and well trusted for our quality product.
[00:32:35] Tejas Oza: That’s that’s a really good point. You’re talking about technology now, so let me ask you about that. So in your view, what role the technology plays in helping Australian exporters grow in international markets. And also improving productivity, accelerate growth, et cetera.
[00:32:53] David Lawson: Yeah. Great. Great question. Tejas. When I was first exporting to Japan, when I first started my business, I was doing everything by fax, and yet here we are, with iPads, with microphones doesn’t matter where we are, but we can deliver this.
This kind of informative value add just through technology. So that’s that’s an exciting development. I’m gonna answer that in two ways too, TJA, because as people, so at the at the enterprise level, I really wanna encourage people to, in, in their marketing campaigns, just really make sure that you are using your technologies to the best possible way.
And when I refer to that, it could be just as simple. You get a marketing edge for by the quality of your website, for example, making sure that you’ve got really good really easily navigatable. Website that you know, that spending a bit of time and money and effort in getting that right can be really, can really pay the evidence, having multi-language links so that customers can easily understand your product.
A little trick. I should, just. Underscore here is if you do have supply chains offshore, but you’re also selling off your own website, make sure that you’re not cannibalizing your own market. So your importer might be sitting there in Singapore and. Investing in building your brand in, into the market, but there’s no use.
If then you sell to a Singapore and who’s traveling down here and you just you ship it up, you ship a case of wine up to Singapore for half the price that they can buy at the retail outlet in know, in Singapore. You’re just gonna undercut your partner’s business in that market. So just be really careful about that.
How you use technology, things like Instagram. I don’t use Instagram, but savvy shoppers do. So get your head around that. Employ the people that understand that, to really make sure that you’re using the tools to the best effect, the impact of artificial intelligence, Chachi PT and things like that.
I’ve been dabbling with that a little bit myself. There’s some really good efficiencies I think that you can get from using this kind of new technology. So be across the technologies that are coming through, but then you also see, some really sophisticated technology.
And this is right, this kind of plays into the importance of why we attract foreign investment into Australia as well, because foreign investment partners often bring new technology. I’m thinking of. The satellite controlled tractors that you know are I just can’t remember the name of the particular satellite, but there’s one that goes over Japan and over Australia, so that satellite system can help control.
You, you can you can get a better sense of your field. You can see if there’s sufficient water, for example, in the field. You can monitor the growth of your crops, but you can also direct the tractor for remote for remote harvesting. There’s all kinds of new technologies and foreign countries and foreign companies, I should say.
Invest in Australia because it’s a worthwhile investment because of the greater efficiencies in production. So there’s some, there’s all kinds of great stories in wine. For example, there’s a company called Accolade, one of their biggest wine producers in Australia.
So they. They’ve partnered with a technology firm called vis and they’ve got this talking about artificial intelligence. They’ve got this machines called the VIS Fit Machine Technology. They’ve rolled it out at various estates. One of the, one of the biggest wine producing areas in in, in South Australia.
And what they what this this artificial intelligence, the machine learning fit machine measures how measures the performance of the machinery involved in producing wine. You’re not you can anticipate. Breakdowns in the technology you can work accordingly and service your machines to make sure that you don’t get breakdowns.
So that you are always online, always producing, and you can just, produce more efficiently. There’s all kinds of technologies. It’s great going to some of the technology conferences, for example as well. And and then you have alternate proteins. So just the science going into more efficient ways of producing proteins to feed the world.
There’s some great opportunities for Australia.
[00:38:23] Tejas Oza: Thanks for thanks for that technology. Aspects of the technology, which is also helping exporters. Unashamedly, I should also have a plug that ImpexDocs is also one of the technologies which can potentially help and people can look it up.
I’ll ask last question now. Yes. And it is to do with the companies which are coming in Australia. Yeah. There are, or there could be importers of what coming in Australia to source or even the Producers or big companies who wants to have their presence here, they want to invest in Australia, produce in Australia, and then export from Australia.
What advice do you have for them?
[00:39:15] David Lawson: We so we are the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, so a big part of the work we do, in fact is work with potential investors from offshore, understand what they’re looking for, and then help them find the best site for. For their investment.
We work really closely with the state governments, as I mentioned before, in, in helping these foreign companies make investments in Australia. And this, some of our biggest exporters from Australia are in fact foreign companies who’ve invested in Australia to produce product in the mining sector, all of the massive capital involved in, in, building out.
Our LNG sector, that’s a lot of, that is foreign capital. They bring the know how they just bring the enormity of their supply chains to be able to bring product to market and get it into their customer base. But, one of the one of the best little examples that I’m really intimately familiar with is in fact, Sakata rice crackers.
So you, I’m picking on a brand here, but sakata rice crackers, great little several hundred year old simbe or rice cracker. Manufacturer in Australia sorry. In in Japan? In regional Japan, the population’s declining. The kids buy different product, they’re putting money into, I don’t know toys and things like that.
And they’re not buying rice, traditional rice crackers. The rice is seven times more expensive. The water is five times more expensive than Australia. They came to Australia and said, you’ve got water. You grow rice. We think there might be a possibility for us to be able to manufacture our rice crackers and ship them back to Japan.
So they set up down here in Australia and they became a hit product. In fact, they were so popular they never exported back to Japan because they couldn’t keep up with demand in Australia. So they increased the size of their plant here and then they started exporting to Southeast Asia years after I was helping involved and, involved in their some of their early stages, their investment.
I was traveling in Vancouver and Canada went to a supermarket. Sakata rice crackers. They’re exporting all over the world out of a base in Melbourne. So that’s the kind of investment that, that Australia helps companies make into Australia. And every day we’re working with different prospects, Ferrera, Russia They invested heavily maybe 10, 15 years ago in Australia.
The crops are all coming online now, and they’re a major exporter from Australia from their hazelnut plantations here in Australia. Yeah, so we look forward to, if you, if there are people listening here that wanna buy from Australia, the foreign companies listening, they wanna buy from Australia, either reach out to our.
The Australian Embassy or the Australian High Commission, go to our website, find out the, the details of our local office or get in contact with us here in Australia and we can either help find a supplier from Australia or help them invest in Australia. Can you tell I’m really passionate about this job?
[00:43:18] Tejas Oza: I can absolutely, David, and it is such a pleasure to speak to you. Always good. And I really want to thank you. I always learn a lot when I have a conversation with you about what Austrade doing and how what fantastic work Austrade is actually doing to help Australian exporters as well as getting more investment in Australia. Hats off to you and the Austrade team. Thanks David. I wanted to thank you one, one more time. Hopefully we will get you once again on the podcast later on.
[00:43:52] David Lawson: Look forward to it, and absolutely.
[00:43:54] Tejas Oza: Thanks a lot once again.
[00:43:55] David Lawson: All right, thanks Tejas.
[00:43:56] Tejas Oza: This has been the Global Trade Made Easy podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss an episode of Innovative Ideas from Trade Leaders across the globe. For even more insights on global trade, visit our website at impexdocs.com.au, where we share resources for successful international trade management.
Until next time, Happy Trading.
