CEO Update: A Message from George Yammouni

Colleagues,

This is my first update for 2025, I hope you have all started the year well.

Australian PMI

The S&P Global Australia Manufacturing PMI rose to 50.4 in February, up from 50.2 in January. This was the strongest month for the past year. New orders rose this month spurred on by higher export orders, in terms of input costs and output price, inflation softened. Business optimism climbed to the highest level in almost three years which was really great to hear in this month’s report.

New Zealand PMI

The BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) in New Zealand rose over two points from 51.4 in Jan to 53.9 in February. This was the highest growth in the overall PMI since August 2022. All other indicators were in expansion, namely production, new orders, and employment all up by over 2 points. Of all the indicators, deliveries showed the biggest growth from 52.2 up to 56.2.

People at Headland

Since my last update we’ve had some new faces join our team.

Brendan Lapage – our VIC CNC Engineer from South Africa, joined in February with many years of experience in CNC technology.

Shane Scott – our QLD Storage/Waterjet/CNC Engineer also from South Africa. Joined our QLD service team in January.

Andrew Rankin – CNC Applications for Victoria, Andrew joins us with years of experience in CNC Technology, namely DMG Mori and OKUMA.

Company update

While most of us were finding things have been quiet over Dec-Jan-Feb, and some business investment decisions were being deferred, through the month of March we can see optimism is definitely returning.  We’re also finding that many companies are planning for the future, and demand for our consulting experts in technology and software, automation are seeing a sharp increase.

Our own investment plans in people and training continue without hesitation as we experience increased demand for relocation services, maintenance services and refurbishment work which extends the life of machinery assets. We continue to add capacity in WA and S.A, and we’re very pleased to have attracted talent from some of our more traditional competitors in recent months.

Our Heavy Industry Solutions, Fabrication and Plastics business Units are also witnessing increases in demand.

I’ve just returned from visits interstate and to NZ, attempting to personally stay in touch with our existing and new prospective clients for a grass roots reading of the topics on their minds. It appears safety is once again a major topic of concern with ”some” low cost imported products which do not have CE Certification or fail to meet AU/NZ safety standards. Headland takes safety extremely seriously and we will not import products which represent safety risks.

The Australian Manufacturing Week exhibition is just around the corner, starting on May 6 in Melbourne. We look forward to seeing you at the Headland Technology stand MT840.

Additionally, please look out for our save-the-date invitation for our Oktoberfest event. It will be held in late October in Melbourne this year, so we hope to see you at our Head Office building in Burwood. It’s always a great opportunity to reconnect and enjoy some festivities of German tradition, with good friends and business partners.

 

Kind Regards,

George Yammouni