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Austrade: How to Do Business in Australia Sydney, Australia.
T
he Australian Trade and Investment Commission, or Austrade, is the Australian federal agency tasked with promoting trade and investment between Australia and the rest of the world. In this interview, Chris Knepler, an investment commissioner at Austrade’s Chicago office, speaks with Municipal Water Leader Editor-in-Chief Kris Polly about how U.S. water companies can do business down under. Kris Polly: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
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Kris Polly: How can Austrade help U.S. companies in the water sector do business in Australia? Chris Knepler: It depends on what the U.S. company is looking to do. At the initial stage, our website, austrade.gov.au, has a wealth of information about the Australian economy, trends, and opportunities. The information on the website includes a number of industry reports and what we call the Benchmark Report, which is our premier guide to all aspects of the Australian economy. It’s a good source for gaining an understanding of the market. There is also some information there about cultural differences in doing business in Australia. Consulting that information would be a good first step for U.S. exporters who want to see if Australia is a good market for them.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAI LINH TRUONG.
Chris Knepler: I grew up in Milwaukee and studied business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then moved to Washington, DC, and worked for an organization called Cambridge Associates, which helped nonprofits invest their endowment funds. I got a master’s of business administration (MBA) at the University of California, Berkeley, studying the management of technology. Then I joined a U.S. State Department–funded program called the MBA Enterprise Corps, which was similar to the Peace Corps. This was the early 1990s, and they were looking at how to teach business skills to Eastern Europeans after the Berlin Wall came down. In 1994, I went to Hungary and worked with a telecom company there as it tried to understand how to do business with the West. That started my telecommunications-focused career. I worked in corporate telecoms in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and in Indonesia with Motorola. At some point along the way, I realized that a lot of my telecom work dealt with the intersection of both government and business. After a couple years during the dot-com era working in New York with startups, I went to work with the Australian government, helping it craft its strategies for helping Australian technology companies succeed overseas. That was around the time of the United States–Australia Free Trade Agreement of the early 2000s. I’ve been working with the Australian government for more than 15 years now, first in New York, then in Australia, then in Brazil, and now in the Chicago mission. Austrade, or the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, is the Australian federal government’s trade
and investments promotion agency. It helps facilitate business between Australia and the rest of the world. We help Australian companies find opportunities for their business in offshore markets. We work with companies that are looking to source technology from Australia and find suppliers. We also work with offshore companies that are looking for business opportunities in Australia, for example, to export their products to Australia, but hopefully to eventually invest in Australia in the shape of an operational facility, a manufacturing facility, or a research center, thereby creating jobs. We have offices located around the world in over 80 different cities and countries. Austrade’s Americas region includes offices in Chicago; Boston; Houston; New York; San Francisco; Toronto; Vancouver; and Washington, DC. We also have offices all throughout Latin America. Each office focuses on different industries, based on location, and some have more of a trade promotion angle while others work more on the foreign direct investment– attraction side. We have five primary government priorities: resources and energy, agribusiness and food processing, services and technology, international health, and tourism. Those are the main areas in which we’re looking to source investments into Australia.
