The successful projects under the first round of the Coalition’s regional-specific job creation initiative, will allow nearly $7.5-million in new projects would now proceed throughout the region.

This is fantastic news for our local area. Industry and manufacturing have been an important part of the region’s economy in decades gone by, but now a new wave of industry development is on the way and I’m delighted our government is helping to facilitate that.

We have already been investing in a number of key initiatives designed to generate more jobs in the region and this is another important layer in this process.

Our record investment in aged care locally, the expansion of funding into infrastructure, roads and bridge projects and the tax cuts and employment assistance measures for small businesses are all important to the work we are doing at the Federal level to get our region’s economy moving.

Funding will be made available to assist with the development of a new $4-million Transport Terminal at Cundletown to be built and operated by Jim Pearson Transport generating 110 jobs.

This is a particularly important project in that it will not only be one of the company’s largest operations, it will be an important anchor in council’s overall plan to develop Taree’s northern gateway.

While this project in itself is significant and will have many economic spin-offs, I’m hopeful it will be the catalyst for more development in the area.

Wauchope’s Food Machine’s Australia is expanding into a new greenfield site next to their Production Drive facility and this will deliver 20 jobs throughout the construction phase and beyond.

Taree’s Bamboo Engineering Products at Logan Leigh Benchtops is set for a major expansion to allow the company to create greater capacity and meet growing demand for their bamboo products.

Around 40 jobs will be created throughout the construction phase of this project. Initially an extra 25 new jobs will be created with the expansion, and this could rise with the growth generated by increased capacity of the company’s operations.

I am delighted to announce Taree’s Stebercraft has been successful in its application seeking support for its Fibreglass Reinforced Plastics & Engineering upgrade. Again this project will not only create a number of new jobs and maintain existing jobs, but also provide the manufacturer the capacity to take advantage of new market opportunities which will create many more jobs.

As part of this announcement, an expansion of Valley Industries’ Linen Service will get underway to improve their capability and capacity to meet growing demand generating 15 jobs.

Crocker Oars at Oxley Island will undertake a $1.3-million upgrade of its operations to make them more efficient. This project will create a number of skilled employment opportunities and provide new up-skilling opportunities for the existing workforce.

Submissions to the North Coast Jobs and Investment package initiative were highly competitive and I am hopeful a further round of funding will be made available to support further projects in the future.

This is a great initiative that is helping to create hundreds of direct and indirect jobs in the Manning and Hastings areas, and I’m so pleased our region has done so well in this first round of projects.