While many experts are sounding the death knell for Australian manufacturing, Rinnai Australias Managing Director Greg Ellis is reinvesting and reinventing manufacturing in this struggling sector. Implementing an ambitious plan for growth and development, Greg has focused on building on the parent company core technological strengths while exploring new markets and segments within Australia and export from Australia.
Greg recently sat down with The CEO Magazine to talk about the emergence and evolution of Rinnai Australia.
I took the reins in 2006. The company had an exceptionally strong brand position and recall in the Australian and global markets, and I saw the opportunity to further leverage the parents core technical competencies in Australia.
As an engineer with a background in technology, marketing, and product and business development, I identified the opportunity for Rinnai to position into the renewable-energy appliance sector and exploit the embedded brilliance in Rinnai Japanese technologies to construct innovative hybrid products and adapt these initially for suitability to the Australian market, but with extended application potential for other geographies.
That was a key part of the vision. But the moat around Australia proved a formidable protection barrier, particularly at a low Australian dollar FX, hence the business case for local manufacture and assembly was constructed and supported by our Japanese board.
