Page 3979 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 17 November 2015
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agreement has played an integral part in enabling Australian businesses to access greater opportunities for two-way trade and investment with the world’s largest consumer market. This is why it is important to proactively engage with relevant cities, government officials and business leaders in the United States. It certainly is fundamental to Canberra’s emergence as a global city. The ACT government is committed to creating the right business environment to accelerate business innovation and supporting business investment in future growth areas.
The mission was supported by 22 Canberra businesses through San Francisco and Silicon Valley, with a further 15 travelling to Austin, Texas. With a program focused on ICT and renewable energy, the delegation engaged in building networks, demonstrating technology, gaining insights into industry best practice, and exploring opportunities to access the US market and opportunities for investment. The delegation also explored elements of equity attraction and commercialisation of innovation.
My first two official engagements for this delegation involved visiting the headquarters of two Canberra companies operating in the Silicon Valley area: Seeing Machines and Quintessence Labs. Both of these companies have no doubt benefited from the trade and investment relationship that exists between Australia and the US and have certainly contributed to the value of trade between the two countries.
I first visited the research and development facility in Mountain View, California for Seeing Machines, a great Canberra success story, spun out of a robotics laboratory at the Australian National University. Seeing Machines is a Canberra headquartered company that is a world leader in autonomous vehicle technology. The company was awarded the ACT Chief Minister’s exporter of the year in 2014, named Business Review Weekly’s most innovative product and medium-size business in 2015, and endorsed by Gartner as one of their “cool vendors”. Seeing Machines has secured alliance partners with global heavyweights Caterpillar, Boeing and Samsung. Its technology is currently being used in a range of sectors, including mining, road transport and rail, and is expected to appear in private passenger cars as early as 2016. Seeing Machines has shipped more than 4,000 units of its driver safety system worldwide.
Another Canberra business that is positioning our city as a major force in the national and international innovation system is Quintessence Labs. Dr Vikram Sharma, CEO of Quintessence Labs, organised and hosted a tour of his contract manufacturing partner’s facility where Quintessence Labs products are integrated into a range of hardware applications for the defence and security sectors. The success of Quintessence Labs in the US market highlights Canberra’s significant strengths in cutting-edge innovation commercialised in the sectors of defence and security, information and communications technology and e-government.
Our local businesses and entrepreneurs are positioning Canberra as a major force in national and international innovation systems. Both of these organisations have been previous recipients of ACT exporter awards, and both reiterated their desire to continue maintaining a significant presence in Canberra.
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