Western Australia is renowned as one of the world's great mining provinces, but less well known is the emergence of Perth as a global centre for mining services.
Western Australia is renowned as one of the world's great mining provinces, but less well known is the emergence of Perth as a global centre for mining services.
Collectively this sector generates annual exports worth about $1 billion, from products as diverse as mining software, engineering, drilling services, and training technology.
Perth companies such as engineering consultants Lycopodium are venturing abroad to places like Ghana in West Africa and Manila in the Philippines.
Geologists from around the world who are planning to develop new mines often use software written in Perth at companies including Gemcom and Maptek.
Then there's Nedlands-based ISS Group, which delivers its software products to the resources sector in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Singapore and the UK.
Based in Osborne Park, Immersive Technologies has become a global leader in the supply of training simulators to heavy-duty equipment operators.
Modern Industries provides its construction and engineering expertise to South-East Asia, while Perth-based drilling services company Imdex has a joint venture in Saudi Arabia and supplies products and services to the minerals and mining services industries in other regions, including Eastern Europe, South America, India, and South Africa.
Mining equipment provider ADG Global Supply is, as the name suggests, an international company providing its services all over the world.
These and many other mining services companies in Perth have garnered success in the international marketplace, in the process helping to diversify the state's economy and reduce its direct reliance on mining.
So what has given these organisations their competitive edge, and can they sustain their success in the face of skilled labour shortages and sharply rising costs?
Speaking at a recent WA Business News mining and resources forum, ADG Global Supply chief executive Andy Greathead said the success of WA's mining services sector was derived from its recognition that the industry had evolved into a single global market.
"The US doesn't seem to know that anybody outside the US exists," he said.
"Whereas we here, a long way from everyone, have had to go out and get what we wanted.
"I think that's similar for most Australian companies, most people [from other countries] want to ignore what's happening in Australia, so we've had to be proactive getting out in the market.
"Business hasn't really come to us as a country.
"Industry has said 'roll your sleeves up and go out and get it, display that work ethic and hope that behaviour transpires to the areas you're campaigning in'."
Lycopodium chairman Mick Caratti believes WA's hardworking culture and proactive approach to entering the international market had given it a competitive edge.
"All of the major engineering companies worldwide are in Perth; that's for obvious reasons, there's a lot of work here," Mr Caratti told the forum.
"Most of the mining projects in Africa, north of Zimbabwe, have been built by Australian companies.
"And what I've always found, when we've run feasibility studies, is that the quality of work coming out from Perth is second to none.
"South Africa has got the skills, but they're very hard to pull together properly."
Mr Caratti said about 80 per cent of Lycopodium's income came from outside Australia.
"We have also established an office in Manila because we recognise that we have to compete with companies outside of Australia," he said.
Immersive Technologies chief executive Peter Salfinger attributes his company's international success to the recruitment of top quality employees, and to keeping them satisfied.
He told the forum that ensuring staff members were ideally suited to assigned tasks, and trying to match their passion with prescribed assignments, was the key to expansion initiatives coming to fruition.
"Our position now is certainly the world leader. We have 95 per cent of any mining simulator that's sold into the mining industry for operator training," Mr Salfinger said.
"We've also been lucky we've secured exclusive relationships with Caterpillar, Komatsu, Liebherr, Hitachi and P&H.
"They exclusively work with us on a global basis and only provide us with data packages to produce the simulators for them, as well as recommending us to their customer base.
"That's quite an achievement, I think, to have that come out of Perth; global companies are dealing just with us."
Mr Salfinger said Immersive currently had 46 software developers, but was planning on expanding that by 150 per cent next year.
"We've looked at outsourcing software development, but all our IP [intellectual property] generation is done in-house in Perth," he said.
Gemcom Australia managing director Nic Pollock said his company was one of the biggest software developers in Perth because it had recognised a void in the marketplace and filled it.
He said Perth had emerged as a global centre for mining services, particularly mining technology and software providers, which had filled niche markets.
ISS is another software firm to lift its profile in the international market.
Last month, the company announced a new international marketing agreement with global oilfield services company Schlumberger, a contract with guaranteed payments of about $17 million over several years.
The contract gives Schlumberger exclusive rights to market ISS's BabelFish production integration software in the upstream oil and gas industry.
Modern Industries managing director Andrew White said that, as an industry, the mining services sector in WA had to initiate business internationally in order to compete.
"We've got to be out there pushing the business and taking on the international companies," Mr White told the forum.
However, he said efforts by any company to become a player on a global scale would be redundant if the organisation failed to recruit and retain quality staff.
"The situation we have at Modern is rather interesting. We have an expanding business, with about 200-plus people," Mr White said.
"It was a change in the old management team; there was a retirement phase and a lot of the senior people left, so we promoted a lot of younger people in the business who were just working under instruction, who were kept in a box almost.
"But by making their lives interesting we solved our turnover problem.
"The expansion of our business is all about bringing people in and making them feel part of the team."
