Page 2696 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 September 2014
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Brumbies’ participation in a rugby 10s tournament which was used to celebrate the opening of Singapore’s new national stadium. I will speak more about that shortly.
Visiting a hub of world trade like Singapore brings home the possibilities that are open for Canberra companies with the innovation and the belief to take their products to the world. I refer to companies like Intelledox, who invited me to their announcement of a major partnership with global corporate entity Fuji-Xerox. To be able to assist Intelledox to make this announcement at the CommunicAsia conference in front of the Canberra booth was certainly a highlight for the mission. Companies like SchoolPro are positively positioning themselves to sell administration software to Singapore schools by setting up an office in Singapore.
Companies like Link Digital found that the data aggregation solution they are currently providing to the Australian government is what the Singaporean government is also looking for. Companies like On-the-Go announced in Singapore a major deal to sell custom-made sports apparel uniforms to Anytime Fitness Asia, the world’s largest health club chain. On-the-Go also win the “entrepreneurial spirit award” for the mission for opportunistically securing a supply deal with the hotel they were staying in just in the four days that they were there. Companies like E-way, the electronic payments company, have several Singaporean customers and recently announced a partnership with a Singaporean bank which developed from a lead investigated during the trade mission.
The ACT’s tertiary education sector was also well represented on the mission, with the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, Professor Stephen Parker, attending. The ANU also had a strong presence, and took the opportunity to organise a regional alumni event which attracted over 150 people.
I would also quickly like to make mention of other mission participants, as I am sure we will be hearing more about them in the future. Quintessence Labs and the Centre for Internet Safety are two companies that have spun out of Canberra’s world-renowned research institutions. They not only show great commercial promise but also they are consistently lifting Canberra’s knowledge-based reputation by their international activities.
Finally, I make mention of Wild Bear, one of Canberra’s most successful exporters. This high-quality production company is making great inroads into the Asian market and was targeting Singaporean production companies and cultural institutions on this mission.
Whilst in Singapore I took the opportunity to meet with a number of key organisations with experience in delivering major urban infrastructure such as our own city to the lake and capital metro projects. For example, SMRT, or the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit Corporation, enjoy an annual turnover of approximately $SGD1.1 billion and have billions of dollars worth of public transport assets, including an extensive and popular light rail system. I was very pleased to see the interest that SMRT demonstrated in the capital metro project and that they were represented yesterday at the industry briefing. It can only augur well if companies of this size and experience are involved in ACT public transport infrastructure in the future.
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