Kimberly Clark announced on April 3rd that they were closing the Australian Huggies factory with a loss of 220 jobs. Obviously service providers lost contracts and jobs as well. Just as well they didn't make the announcement on April 1st.
The Company statement said that in a global restructuring program, production will move to Kimberly-Clark’s facilities in Asia, enabling faster access to the latest research and engineering advancements in nappies and pants.
I doubt that the move will mean lower prices for Australian mothers.
With the number of manufacturing jobs being moved off-shore Australia will soon have no manufacturing at all. At one time global companies bought up local companies and rebranded them, now they just close the local manufacturing plants and import from overseas, for example Heinz.
One exception comes to mind, Kraft, who sold their cheese and other interests back to Australia.
Over the decades various Federal governments have been convinced that free trade agreements are the way of the future, but we seem to have lost more than we gained. Socialist governments have increased company taxation, jacked up wages, put on carbon taxes, made stupid free trade agreements making manufacturing offshore and importing almost desirable.
We are at the situation where Indian Immigrants in IT lose their jobs because they have been outsourced to India.
At one time Australia was said to live off the back of the sheep with wool, lamb and mutton producing the majority of exports. Currently the wool export market is greater than A$3 billion.
The major exporters are the miners with A$163.5 billion which is about 65% of total exports.This means that Australia is rapidly becoming just another hole in the ground. The Federal and State governments do not care because the bulk of their income comes from mineral licenses.
It would be nice to go back to sustainable exports and produce what we are good at. Just ask the thousands of Chinese mothers who pay over the odds for Australian baby milk powder if 'Made In Australia' is good.
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