Aaron Chen, Marketing Manager of C-Mac Industries Cooperative Ltd which is a substantive manufacturer leader in Sydney Australia, was researching and trying to purchase a SUV due to the expansion of his family.

Aaron Chen knew that the products made in Australia usually have very high quality and consumers can rest assured and have confidence in the product performance. So he researched online trying to find some SUV brands locally made in Australia, but only found that the remaining Australian Made brand Holden closed its factory in late 2017 (*), leaving only the design and development facilities remaining in operation and potentially expanding.

It is a discouraging fact that the manufacturing industry in Australia is going downhill and Australia is losing one manufacturing job every 19 minutes between 2008 and 2013(*).

Facing this huge challenge, C-Mac Industries Cooperative Ltd which is a workers co-operative is taking actions and evolving into a new modern business entity.

In 2017, all staff in C-Mac agreed to become business owners and the company transferred from being family owned for over 50 years to a Manufacturing Worker Co-operative as this socially responsible succession model was found to be the best way to sustain and grow a manufacturing business in Australia.

We have decided to prepare for the future by purchasing 3D printing equipment, learning all about this new style of manufacture and putting the business on a good footing and be in a position to continually adapt to this ever changing and evolving form of manufacture. This all started recently in early 2018”

.Robert McMaster, director of C-Mac Industries

With the tough manufacturing environment in Australia, C-Mac was still growing strongly with the help of its dedicated team, it must embrace change or perish.

The management team had seen Additive Manufacturing evolving over the last seven years and understood that 3d printing was a new type of manufacturing and would become the way forward for the future and be widely used in different industries that their conventional CNC equipment would be eventually redundant to some extent. So the decision was made to invest and move with the times.

With the advanced 3d printers and now growing experienced 3d experts in-house, C-Mac has over this ten month period 3d printed various parts and objects for over 10 industries which include Medical, Industrial, Architecture, Construction, Manufacture, Baking Business & Restaurants, Universities and General public and more coming through the doors or making enquiries over the internet every day.

You have to embrace change. We have seen so many manufacturing companies in Sydney go bankrupt because they are not willing to change or are slow to adapt to change” or have over capitalised on the wrong equipment“

.Steve Grlyak, General Manager of C-Mac Industries

It is challenging to enter a new field of manufacturer and adopting to a new way of thinking in manufacture, using the old skills and knowledge to make things in a new and more efficient way. The company understands how to approach and manufacture items and assemblies due to its traditional understanding of materials and their properties and how they stand up to use. Additive manufacturing is slowly becoming one of the preferred approaches to develop a product model and is now becoming best practice in manufacturing, where the end results will be providing even better customer satisfaction.

C-Mac has fully utilised its 50 years of experience in manufacture and the skilled fabricators and machinists in-house along with the advanced machinery will help ensure that additive manufacturing works successfully and become a normal part of the business practices and provide for customers’ ever demanding and complex needs.

“It is only the beginning. We are also looking into having a 3d printing scholarship award to provide help to students in Australia along with striving to build a bridge between knowledge and practice”

-Robert McMaster

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Source: The article was gently conceded by C-Mac, and was re-edited by João Andrade on Feb18, 2019;