North West Tasmania provides an amazing array of opportunities for operators of small businesses. The opportunities we have are across a wide range of industry sectors, most related to our access to a unique range of high quality natural resources – more than anywhere else in Tasmania.  Unfortunately, policy development related to business in Tasmania quite often assumes economic drivers are the same and spread evenly throughout our wonderful state. Warren Moore, business consultant based in Burnie, Tasmania puts the case for a more nuanced approach to business development, particularly throughout north west Tasmania.

As a business adviser having worked across northwest Tasmania for a considerable period of time now, I often find myself needing to point out that the economy of the north west coast can be, indeed, quite different to that of northern Tasmania and also, southern Tasmania.

This is quite often in response to the tendency of larger organisations, Tasmanian and Australian governments included, to treat the whole of Tasmania as if the economic and business drivers are ubiquitous throughout Tasmania.  Consequently, this leads to policies that might work for southern Tasmania (strong government, professional services, health care sectors), or even northern Tasmania (strong construction, real estate, professional services, health care sectors) but not necessarily for northwestern Tasmania (strong agriculture, manufacturing, processing sectors).

Compared with the two other Tasmanian regions, the north west Tasmanian economy is driven, largely, as a result of its proximity to a relatively wide range of high value natural resources (rainfall, fertile soil, minerals, coastline, abundant sea life) leading to higher levels of economic activity closely associated with the growth, harvest, processing and export of high quality products (food, engineering, minerals) to global commodity markets.  It can be argued that the economy of northwest Tasmania is the most exposed to the influence of global commodity markets than any other major region in Tasmania.

A key characteristic of the northwest economy (albeit a changing one) is its reliance on a relatively small number of larger national and global businesses predominantly involved in agriculture, processing and manufacture of the products emanating from the region’s relative abundance of high quality, natural resources.  The fortunes of these large businesses are tied, predominantly, to global commodity markets, where even though these are large businesses in Tasmania, they are still small, and therefore price takers, in their global markets.

To a large extent, the fortunes of businesses in northwest Tasmania swing on the fortunes (or otherwise) of the large national and international businesses as these businesses are impacted by changes in global, mainly commodity markets.  For those who have operated businesses in northwest Tasmania for an extended period of time, we will remember the litany of significant ‘downsizings’ of major employers in the region including those associated with Australian Paper, Tioxide, Caterpillar, McCains, Classic Foods, Australian Weaving Mills, Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Company, Copper Mines of Tasmania, to name a few.  The impact, particularly on local employees, was (and remains) significant and is something we cannot control but can only respond to.

Indeed, a key characteristic of the northwest economy in recent years, has been the gradual transition of the economy from a high dependence on a small number of national and international firms producing a range of lower value products for global commodity markets, to a larger number of smaller, local owned firms producing a range of differentiated, higher value products for a range of local, national and international customers.

This results in economic conditions in northwest Tasmania often being quite different to those elsewhere in Tasmania because the drivers of economic activity are also different. Hence, economic development policies (and indeed policies also driven by politics), that address issues elsewhere in Tasmania may not be as relevant to northwest Tasmania.