Advanced Manufacturing Australia
Case study: Colan Australia
Fifty years ago, the technical textile market was small, focused on markets such as the marine industry. Uses now range from transport and aerospace components, to safety gear and decorative items—including fibreglass palm trees.
Colan Australia is one of few technical textile manufacturers left in Australia, says chief executive Genelle Coghlan, but is ready for the renewed interest. “We started in the 1950s, struggling with a business that wasn’t really accepted. Now, because of economics and environment, it has become really important.”
In the 1970s, the composites producer started exporting woven rovings to Japan and surfboard material to Hawaii, USA; they sponsored Australian Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly when he became World Surfing Champion in 1964. Their range has since broadened to supply material such as ballistics for defence, components for refrigerated transportation and uniforms for the fire brigade and army.
“Australia was always a small market,” says Coghlan, adding that although they’ve exported everywhere over the years, their current focus is Asia and the Middle East. “A lot of the big surfboard manufacturers are in Asia and we export into Asia not only for composites but for insulation glass. The Middle East use our products quite widely, like for radomes, and their pipes are mostly made of fibreglass, and things like the roof of the Abu Dhabi airport is all fibreglass. The palm trees at Dubai Airport are made out of fibreglass.”
While their lean, flexible approach and ability to do small production runs appeals to smaller buyers, Colan targets large users such as pipe manufacturers. While this means bigger contracts, cash flow has tightened as payments usually come in the form of lump sums after 90 days. Another challenge is currency fluctuations; although they have a natural hedge—buying materials and selling product in US dollars—the high Australian dollar and the weaker export market during the latest economic downturn affected earnings.
Dumping during this period was also a threat, though Coghlan says agility allowed them to compete outside price: “If a market has been undercut and it’s not worth it, we’ll just find another, whatever we can manufacture; we have a wide range of new machines for it.”
And being Australian has helped, she notes. “We sell ourselves as Colan Australia and we do that very deliberately, because Australia has such a good reputation as a quality provider and we have a reputation as a quality provider.”
With an experienced, multilingual team behind her, Coghlan is confident of the future. New material, Innegra, is being trialled for various uses, and sectors such as wind energy now require technical fabrics; “We’re on the verge of great things because every week someone finds a use for our product.”
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