I strode confidently into the room and seized upon the first of many new leads I would develop that day.
That was the image I was projecting in my head to psych myself up for the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Sydney last week.
In reality I slunk in, power-walked around the show trying to come up with a plan and then hid in the bathroom for 10 minutes wondering what on earth I was thinking being there.
Conferences are a hot-house of emotion. You’ve got trade stands who’ve paid a fortune to be there and are questioning their reasoning; the speakers who worry about being ‘‘exposed’’ as a fraud on-stage; and the expo walker who feels like they’re in the cheap seats because they’re neither and everyone knows it.
Then everyone gets into the swing of things and three days later, a little worse for wear after the final networking function, with a dozen new business cards, a handful of new LinkedIn connections and a head full of new aspirational ideas, you’re hugging folks goodbye and saying ‘‘see you next year’’.
I have done five conferences in the last six weeks and had a go at each role – the exhibitor, the speaker, the visitor. I’ve felt varying levels of the above insecurities at each one, and yes, by the end, I’ve been hugging previous strangers goodbye.
From every conference I’ve taken away a much deeper insight into the industries they are in and, importantly, our opportunity as a business to position ourselves within it.
The New Zealand Aerospace Summit was held in Christchurch in late September. We were a sponsor, exhibitor and I was also part of a panel discussion Aerospace For Good.
I can’t say in my wildest career dreams that I ever expected to be a panellist alongside Vandi Verma, the chief engineer for Nasa’s Mars Rover programme.
What I really took away from the panel and the wider conference was that, despite the hype of rocket science, there is a growing respect that fundamentally space is a manufacturing industry and requires all the same boring inputs of supply chain, talent and machinery that every other manufacturing sector needs.
New Zealand has a global competitive advantage with our unrivalled access to airspace and it would be a travesty to promote us as purely a ‘‘sandbox’’ for tech testing, without building the industrial capability around it to manufacture.
At the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting at the Devonport Naval base, I was one of 16 companies given the opportunity to showcase New Zealand aerospace, marine and manufacturing capabilities.
Led by Minister of Defence Judith Collins and Rear Admiral Garin Golding, the Chief of Navy, I met with representatives from Australia, Tonga, Fiji, French Polynesia and Papua New Guinea.
The overriding theme was the need to build more resilience into domestic capability to address growing global supply-chain disruption and long lead times for replacement components and repairs from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). I’m hopeful that we’ll see a focus in the soon to be released New Zealand Defence Capability Plan around increasing local content to bolster supply chain resilience.
Next stop I took Shaz (our production controller) to Houston, Texas, for the Global Shop Solutions User Conference.
Three days of intense workshopping with approximately 60 representatives from across 25 companies – from New Zealand, Nigeria, Mexico, Canada and all over the United States and across all types of manufacturing from 1000+ employee firms in automotive, to similar size firms to ourselves in more regional areas of the US and Canada.
I learnt too much to cram into two paragraphs in a 1000-word article but for the highlights – the US’ industrial policy to onshore high-value advanced manufacturing is driving real investment in the sector.
However, like New Zealand, there are huge talent-shortage issues, driven by a lack of alignment between education and workforce requirements; creating an environment ripe for venture capital to consolidate industry and create massive automated facilities, squeezing some of the little players out and reducing supply-chain diversity.
Right now a lot of decision making is on hold awaiting the US election results, but generally the market believes 2025 is going to be a huge year and there are opportunities for small and nimble high-quality operators, both within the US and across ally partners such as New Zealand.
For a complete change of scenery I then jumped across to the abovementioned IMARC in Sydney. Mining may not seem a natural fit, however technology is disrupting the sector through precision instrumentation and machinery to improve the safety, sustainability and productivity of the sector.
Last stop was the Royal Aeronautical Society Annual Symposium at Parliament Hall in Wellington. Once again, the key challenges for this industry are shortages and capability gaps across the workforce and supply chain. Without a pipeline of new aircraft mechanics and maintenance engineers, and with global supply-chain delays in supply of components, aeroplanes are being grounded in some cases for years.
As a small island nation, air travel is so critical to our global access, we need to be more strategic about building domestic resiliences, so it was truly inspiring to hear Air Vice Marshal and Chief of Air Force Darryn Webb discuss their Schools to Skies programme.
Impressively, 42% of the currently serving female air force members have participated in this initiative.
And finally, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from jet-setting across three time zones in two weeks for back-to-back conferences, it’s this: self-care is non-negotiable. It is not about being an instant expert; it’s about showing up, making connections, and proving you’re ready to understand and meet their needs.
What better way to understand your market than to immerse yourself among thousands of them at a time and simply listen.
• Sarah Ramsay is chief executive of United Machinists.
