Australia’s First Missile Factory Is Being Built in the Hunter | John Fry, Kongsberg

Australia is about to build guided missiles for the first time — and Kongsberg is doing it at Williamtown, in the Hunter. John Fry, Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia, joins James MacDonald for the first episode of Engineering in the Hunter to explain what’s being built, why a 210-year-old Norwegian company chose Newcastle over 40 other sites, and what it means for the region: roughly 100 factory jobs, a supply chain that reaches far wider, and a genuine pathway from the University of Newcastle and TAFE into work being done on a world stage.

In this episode:

• What Kongsberg is actually building at Williamtown: the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile — two 5th-generation cruise missiles — in the company’s first missile factory outside Norway, ever.
• The $850m the Commonwealth committed in August 2024 to manufacture and maintain those missiles in Australia, under the guided-weapons (GWEO) enterprise, and why sovereign weapons production suddenly mattered after COVID and Ukraine.
• Why the Hunter beat 40 other sites — the criteria that mattered: proximity to Orchard Hills, a port and an airbase, livability, and a good university and TAFE next door.
• How you stand up a missile factory on the other side of the world through a pandemic — running a P&L from day one, ISO and defence-security accreditation, and building a supply chain from scratch.
• What NSM and JSM actually do — a stealthy, imaging-infrared seeker, deck- or truck-launched, and a missile small enough to fit inside an F-35’s internal weapons bay — and why 14 nations bought one and the US Navy picked a non-US weapon.
• The jobs: not just engineers — planning, supply chain, quality, IT, security, technicians — “the whole gamut,” about 100 at the factory, with ~85% of the build spend flowing to Hunter businesses.
• Growing local talent: Kongsberg’s first Newcastle-uni intern converting to a grad role, sponsoring the university’s rocketry team (who visited Kongsberg in Norway), and how TAFE fits as technician demand ramps.
• Partnerships as the way into the Hunter — HunterNet, Multiplex, and the Thales tie-up behind StrikeMaster, a Bushmaster-mounted NSM launcher.
• What’s next: Army’s Long Range Fires down-select, counter-UAS and air-and-missile defence, and Kongsberg’s ambition to grow well beyond the factory.

About John Fry

John Fry is Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia. A former Australian Army air-defence officer with a chemistry background and a Master of Science in Guided Weapon Systems, he spent nine years at Raytheon — where he was capture lead on the NASAMS program — before joining Kongsberg in 2019 as its inaugural general manager in Australia.

Learn more and register your interest via the Kongsberg careers page.

Engineering in the Hunter is produced by DayOne.

Listen to the Episode

Transcript

Auto-transcribed with AI.

John [0:00]: Kongsberg’s a really interesting company. It’s actually been around since 1814.

James [0:04]: Oh, wow.

John [0:04]: There was no presence here before. Norway has been very successful in doing business internationally, but it’s always been done out of Norway. So we started out with a small production team in Adelaide. So now I suppose we’re in 3 spots. We’re headquartered in Canberra. We have a large production facility down in Walson Lakes in South Australia. And obviously now we’re setting up here in the Hunter on the— obviously with the missile factory as well.

James [0:25]: A great opportunity for the people of the Hunter and creating jobs locally. What type of roles are we talking? You mentioned everything from planning, supply chain procurement, through to engineering. The whole gamut?

John [0:36]: Yeah, the whole gamut.

James [0:37]: Having to grow really quickly, and then the challenge alongside that of having to grow the numbers of a team really quickly in that growth that you’ve gone. What’s the biggest challenge you faced?

John [0:45]: There’s actually been so many challenges. Building supply chains, managing suppliers, you know, when we haven’t had the expertise of building the products before. It’s been It’s been lots of ongoing challenges. We’ve learned a lot of lessons, but we’ve actually been very successful in the process as well.

James [1:00]: Welcome to the first episode of Engineering in the Hunter, our new podcast, which is an evolution from our previous podcast, Engineering Success. What we’re looking to do is share the stories of what’s happening across the Greater Hunter, in particular what’s happening in the engineering and manufacturing space, which new companies are growing, which existing companies are adding to their team, taking on new projects. what’s happening across the Hunter. On today’s episode, we have John Fry. He’s the Managing Director for Kongsberg Defence Australia, and they’re now building a missile factory here in the Hunter. Really keen to share their story of the Kongsberg journey and why they’ve come to the Hunter to build this new factory. Welcome, John.

John [1:45]: Thanks, James. It’s nice to be here.

James [1:46]: I’m really excited to share the story of Kongsberg and what’s happening here in the Hunter. But to give some people some context on who you are, And your background, can we just start there for maybe some of our listeners that don’t know who you are?

John [1:58]: Yeah, so I suppose my background, I’m originally from the Adelaide Hills. I grew up there. I actually joined the Army just after I finished school and went off to the Australian Defence Force Academy, did a chemistry degree there, went off to Duntroon for my final year and was allocated the Corps of Ground-Based Air Defence. So Royal Australian Artillery, but specialising in air defence, which is really around surface-to-air missiles. Always had a, I suppose, a technology sort of And then after that, I went off and did— had lucky enough to return to do an honours degree in chemistry. So that’s my background. Off to air defence units after that, and I was lucky enough to do— be selected to do long-term schooling in the UK when I was a junior captain, and I did a Master of Science in Guided Weapon Systems. And so from there, I suppose I became more of a specialist, I suppose, in that domain. Unusual because I was also an operator as such, not an engineer. From there, after 13 years in the Army, I’ve since done about 20 years in industry. I did about 5 years years working in consulting in the IT industry. And then I joined the sort of large defense prime, US prime called Raytheon. Worked there for 9 years in, I suppose, a number of roles, largely around weapons and integrated air and missile defense. And during that process, I was the capture lead for a system called NASAMS, which is a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, which Army was interested in buying. And that product, NASAMS, is actually a joint Raytheon-Kongsberg product. So I started to work with the Norwegians as well. And I was successful enough to win that program in 2017. We signed the contract for that in 2019. And then not long after that, I actually left Raytheon. Kongsberg were looking to setting up a business in Australia and I joined as the, I suppose, the inaugural general manager, which has sort of rolled on now to become the managing director.

James [3:42]: Very nice. Now there’s a couple of parts of that I want to pull apart. The desire or interest in missiles and air defence, is that something that you just learned along the way, found that interest dug deeper and deeper into that, or was that something that you’ve always thought about or had a passion around that area?

John [3:57]: Yeah, I suppose I was always interested in weapons. I think it definitely grew when I was at, you know, ADFA in Duntrune. So you sort of— the good thing about joining the Army, I suppose, you get— we had about 3 and a half years of sort of seeing what specialisations were available to select. But by the time I got to Duntrune, I was very clear that I wanted to go to artillery, but I actually really wanted to go to air defence. It’s just a lot more technical in terms of the systems thinking, you know, the whole, you know, radar command and control, effectors, that’s always really interested me. And again, I suppose a bit of a technical background too with obviously doing a chemistry degree. So that was probably the most natural alignment for me.

James [4:32]: Yeah, nice. Second question, I don’t know if you’ve dealt with any companies that work in and around defence, as I find there’s quite the mix. You can either come from industry background, if you’re looking for a software engineer, that software engineering background and learn defence, or the defence background like yourself and then learn the commercial side of it as well. You’ve obviously gone the defence side to start with. Do you think that set you up for the success, for your success into the role you’re at now? First question. And the second question, do you think there’s a benefit of either way?

John [5:00]: I think having a balance of both is what defence industry needs. And again, I suppose I’m on an engineering podcast and I’m not an engineer, so I’m a little bit of an imposter here. I’m a chemist, not an engineer. But I think having that technical training and being able to work with engineers sort of, I suppose, don’t have that background. It’s around providing that sort of operational context and how the systems will be used. And I suppose I suppose, and what things are important for users and how they operate those systems. So it’s about the usability and translating that back into, I suppose, engineering requirements and the best way to build that system that means it’s easy to maintain, it’s easy to operate. And that’s really what our men and women in the ADF are looking for.

James [5:41]: And yeah, understanding what they’re looking for, having that contextual background obviously places you at a really strong advantage as well.

John [5:48]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure.

James [5:50]: Nice, mate. You mentioned how you got to know Kongsberg. Obviously Norwegian-based company to start with. How long’s Kongsberg been around? Can you talk to me about that expansion from Norway into Australia? Maybe why Australia to start with, and then we can go on from the journey.

John [6:05]: Yes. So Kongsberg’s a really interesting company. It’s actually been around since 1814.

James [6:11]: Oh wow.

John [6:12]: It’s been around a long time, continuously operating since then. I suppose a bit of a story essentially, Norway was back then part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Napoleonic Wars, I think everyone knows 1814. Fortunately, the Norwegians were, were on the Napoleon side with Denmark, and essentially with war reparations, Denmark had to give up Norway and unfortunately became part of— then part of Sweden, was handed across to Sweden. The Norwegians didn’t really want to be part of Sweden, and so they wrote their own constitution in 1814, and they created their own weapons factory in a town called Kongsberg, which up until then was a silver mining town. All right. Eventually the Kongsberg, I suppose, weapons factory has then evolved into the Kongsberg defence business. And so still doing business and growing quite rapidly, 210+ years on.

James [7:01]: Phenomenal, phenomenal story. And what about that journey into Australia? Obviously we’ll get to the Hunter in a second. Obviously mining background, the same as Kongsberg, but why Australia?

John [7:11]: Yeah, it’s really interesting. So Kongsberg has had a lot of growth, especially in the last probably 6 or 7 years. A lot of that’s been on, I think, you know, obviously everyone’s sort of aware of the peace dividend in Europe. Obviously defence spending in certain areas sort of dropped off. We’ve sort of always been strong in areas like ground-based air defence, strike weapons, command and control systems, especially once obviously, you know, Ukraine happened and all of a sudden those sort of technologies became really required in large volumes. So we’ve had to ramp up our business significantly. I think the defence business is 3 times larger than what it was when I started in 2019. rapid growth. Norway’s only 5 million people, so they really needed to look where outside of Norway they could grow as well. And essentially Australia, the US, and Canada were the 3, I suppose, like-minded nations where they looked to set up. And I think the other part was when we won the NASAMS program back in 2019, Kongsberg decided they were going to set up production of the command and control shelters and some of the other subsystems for that. for that weapon system. But they also saw a long-term view here in Australia because in terms of what Australia had sort of forecast as requiring for their capability needs moving forward, they had great product alignment, especially across air defence, strike for Navy, strike for Air Force and other programs. So, it was decided to set up a business in country in 2019 on the back of that NASAMS contract. And we’ve managed to grow that business significantly since then.

James [8:45]: Started in Canberra?

John [8:47]: Yeah, so we started in Canberra in 2019. So we had one guy in Australia who was a marketing rep. I think the PM and the supply chain manager started a month before I did as the first general manager. And we started out actually, we’re having our, I suppose, set up a program, set up a supply chain. And then obviously we had COVID that struck in 2020. It’s interesting for me ’cause actually, you know, people talk about the challenges of COVID and COVID was, it did make things very difficult. We were trying to set up production to build a system on the other side of the world. It hadn’t been built here before, obviously. And then all of a sudden the Norwegians couldn’t come to Australia or it would be very difficult for them to come to Australia. And it actually made us have to do a lot more quicker. So in some regards it actually accelerated our development ’cause essentially the Norwegians had to trust us and we had to do a lot more than we did. So we actually set up originally actually and had a few people, our production team was based in Adelaide. The reason we chose Adelaide initially was that’s where Raytheon was setting up production of the rest of the system. So obviously made sense for us to be building our components. We did the command and control, we did the launcher, and Raytheon were doing essentially the overall systems integration and the— they had another launcher and the electro-optic sensor. So it was really needed to bring all that, all those elements into one facility and do that full system end-to-end testing. And So that made a lot of sense to do that in Adelaide. And so we started out with a small production team in Adelaide and then once that programme finished, we’ve actually built our own facility in South Australia as well. So now I suppose we’re in 3 spots. We’re headquartered in Canberra, we have a large production facility down in Mawson Lakes in South Australia, and obviously now we’re setting up here in the Hunter on the, obviously with the missile factory as well.

James [10:33]: Nice. We’ll get into the technical. I think that’s the exciting part of what you’re actually doing. But you mentioned some challenge around having to grow really quickly. And then the challenge alongside that of having to grow the numbers of a team really quickly in that growth that you’ve gone, what’s the biggest challenge you faced during that? Obviously there’s the benefits that have come from it. You’ve been forced to move quickly and you’ve got some benefits from that, but I imagine there’s challenges.

John [10:55]: There’s actually been so many challenges. I’ve had my own P&L since day one. We obviously set the business up and been running it and I have to live within my means. So, you know, it’s not like we’ve had a whole bunch of money poured in from overseas. I’ve had to be profitable and sustainable from day one on my own. own sort of balance sheet. But I think really, I suppose 2 parts. One is, you know, there was no presence here before. Norway has been very successful in doing business internationally, but it’s always been done out of Norway. Setting up landed companies on the other side of the world was something a little bit new. Again, having all those systems in place, IT systems, and we’re still getting those things in place, you know, 7 years later. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve had to go through the whole, you know, ISO accreditation, quality stuff, the whole defence industrial security side, building supply chains, managing suppliers, you know, when we haven’t had the expertise of building the products before. It’s been lots of ongoing challenges. We’ve learned a lot of lessons, but we’ve actually been very successful in the process as well. So at some stage I’ll probably, I should write a book. It’d be probably quite cathartic to do that. But it hasn’t been easy, but it’s been, yeah, we’ve done very well. We’ve been really well supported out of Norway. The Norwegians are are great people and they’ve been committed to the success of setting up here and they definitely are, want to be here for the long haul. So I think they see Australia as a great like-minded partner nation. They’re a small nation, right? So they’re looking for, you know, other sort of medium-sized nations to work with quite closely. Yeah.

James [12:25]: John, you mentioned some of the technical sides of things just before. I’d love to dig into that a little bit more. What are we building? What’s the big products? What’s our 2— I know there’s 2 key focus areas being built here in the Hunter. Can you just share a little bit of details? What are we building? How does this play on a world stage? What does it do?

John [12:43]: Yeah, obviously what’s going on up here in the Hunter is super exciting for us as a company. I think also for us as a nation. So obviously as mentioned, obviously set up in Adelaide. We’re also working with the government. Obviously the Australian government was looking to increase focus on and capability around domestic manufacture of key guided weapons and also explosive ordnance as well. Sort of that program really started out in about 2020. And I think, again, around the COVID timeframe, people sort of realised the challenges with global supply chains and the fact that I think, again, weapon production had sort of dropped off around the world. And I think there were some concerns, you know, if we were in conflict, and obviously the world even back then was starting to become a more dangerous place, that we needed to be a lot more self-sufficient in terms of weapons. So there has obviously been a large focus under the what they call the GUIEO program or the GUIEO enterprise to set up domestic manufacture of key guided weapons. Quite forward-leaning in terms of the opportunities that there was in setting up production for both, I suppose, our 2 weapons that we make, both 5th generation cruise missiles. So the Naval Strike Missile and the Joint Strike Missile. And I’ll probably talk a bit about those a little bit later. But essentially, we were working with the Commonwealth around potential opportunities there. We thought we had a great story. We’ve just set up a production, a brand new missile factory in Norway based on those increasing volumes I mentioned before that’s obviously really caused out of the whole challenge in Europe. But also we had a weapon that was, the NSM was interesting because it was replacing the Harpoon anti-ship missile, which has sort of been the mainstay missile on Western navies for the last 30, 40 years.

James [14:21]: Oh wow. So real significant upgrade from a technology perspective.

John [14:24]: Significant upgrade. And all of a sudden, so there was all of a sudden, you know, All Western navies were looking to replace that weapon. The US selected the Naval Strike Missile. Again, unusual for the US to select a non-US weapon, but the NSM is a very good missile. And pretty much Australia, UK, Canada, everyone, or most Western navies now are following suit. And that’s driven huge production in Norway. So Norway went and designed pretty much the most state-of-the-art missile factory, production factory in the world to, I suppose, to cope with those increasing volumes. And because we just did that, we could basically offer that same sort of capability, but at a reduced scale to do here in Australia as well for those 2 weapons. So that sort of coincided then with obviously our Navy selecting the Naval Strike Missile to go on our frigates and destroyers. And then not long after that, obviously the government got very interested in that opportunity to do domestic manufacture. And so we put forward a business case and I think in August 2024, when the government announced they were going to invest about $850 million in the domestic manufacture and maintenance of those 2 missiles, and obviously setting up here in the Hunter.

James [15:31]: Beautiful. That’s a great story to hear of manufacturing in country. Great. You mentioned that the big technology advancement with the Navy Strike Missile, and you’ve also built in the Joint Strike Missile as well.

John [15:41]: Yeah.

James [15:42]: Can you tell me a little bit about that?

John [15:43]: Yeah, so I’ll talk a little bit about both.

James [15:46]: I’d love to understand a little bit more, being a relative novice myself.

John [15:50]: Yeah, so Naval Strike Missile is I suppose it’s a pretty flexible missile. It can be either deck-launched off a ship, so it’s— you sometimes see on a ship missiles can come out of the vertical launcher. That’s not this missile. This missile gets fired off the deck. So there’s a quad pack of missiles, or it could be a twin pack of missiles, normally on both sides of the ship, and— but they sit on top of the deck. But that missile can also actually be launched off a truck. So there’s some nations, including the US Marine Corps, that are also using NSM firing it off the back of vehicles and So NSM is designed primarily as a maritime strike weapon, so designed to shoot other ships, but it also has a land attack capability. I think the thing that makes the NSM, I suppose, different to most of its competitors, it’s obviously highly stealthy, it’s very survivable. Obviously, if you want to shoot another ship, you’ve got to get through the air defences of another ship. And just like our ships have a bunch of air defences to stop anti-ship missiles getting to us, the system needs to be very clever to be able to basically defeat the missiles and the guns to be able to get to the ship. It’s a clever missile, and it’s got a very clever seeker as well. And I think that’s probably the secret sauce of the missile is its imaging infrared seeker, which means it can actually pretty much recognise what type of target it wants to— it needs to take out. So it’s a very clever missile. Yeah. And obviously, like, you know, everyone has realised the value of it, and that’s why we have these large orders.

James [17:17]: And they’re being built here in the Hunter?

John [17:19]: They’re about to be built here in the Hunter. The other missile is the Joint Strike Missile. That’s interesting as well. So the Norwegians, when they did the NSM, and they did the NSM actually development because there was no other missile that really met their requirements. Actually, just jumping back to the NSM and why Norway built the NSM, because it’s probably, again, why Norway making anti-ship missiles and why aren’t they just buying one from the US? The challenge with Norway is if you look at the I suppose their topography. They’ve got all these large fjords, lots of places for ships to hide in there. So they really wanted a very clever cruise missile that could fly over land, go into, you know, fly into fjords and look for targets. So that’s— there was no system that did that. So that’s why they went and designed the NSM. And then obviously— and they thought that it would also have appeal beyond Norway, and obviously it has. JSM’s interesting, Joint Strike Missile. That’s a newer missile. It’s sort of like the younger sister missile of NSM. And that was really on the back of the Norwegian Air Force decision to buy the F-35. As you may be aware, the F-35’s a stealth aircraft.

James [18:19]: Yeah.

John [18:20]: It has internal weapons bays, which means it has bays inside the fuselage where you can store weapons. So the Norwegians wanted to have a, again, a maritime strike weapon that they could carry inside the internal weapons bay, maritime, so that basically the aircraft can maintain its stealth profile. So you don’t have to have things hanging outside it to make it less stealthy. But then you could use those weapons if you needed to. So they started with the NSM, realised it’s not going to fit in the weapons bay, and they had to change the geometry of that and come up with a very similar looking missile. But it is a little bit different, but it shares a bunch of the same technology with the NSM, and that’s called the Joint Strike Missile. And that has been— that missile is about to enter service in Australia, and it’s about to enter service in the US as well. So there’s 14 user nations that have bought the NSM. There’s 5 so far that have acquired the JSM, but, you know, but I think Norway expects that most F-35 users are probably going to go down the JSM path as well. And JSM can also be carried on the wing stations as well of aircraft. So it’s obviously designed specifically to go on the F-35 weapons bay, but can also be carried on the, on those wing stations.

James [19:27]: What I love, a lot of the time I talk to technology or innovation professionals or companies, and what I love is the people that build for their own use or scratch your own itch. Obviously Norway were the nature of the country, had to design something that didn’t exist because of the location and where they were at. So they’re solving their own problem and then building technologies out of that which then get used on a global scale. And I think some of the great innovations and technologies being built is that scratching around each having a problem and then having to solve for that as opposed to, as you said, just buying something out of another country.

John [20:02]: Yeah, yeah. That’s obviously those unique requirements, like operator requirements that drove a different engineering solution. But that provides huge flexibility across a bunch of different ways for that weapon to be used and the operating environment that that could— so it can be littoral, it can be used in blue water. Yeah, that’s quite clever.

James [20:20]: We’re about to start building these in the Hunter. Let’s start with why the Hunter, and then I’d love to get an understanding of what it looks like building these. What type of roles are we creating? What type of company? How big a company? But let’s start with why the Hunter.

John [20:33]: Yeah, it’s a great question. So obviously, as mentioned before, we were developing a business case around why we thought building NSM and JSM in Australia would be both viable and sustainable activity. So we put together that business case, but we obviously, it was really up to us, I suppose, to suggest where we wanted to do that. At the end of the day, it’s a Kongsberg factory. It’s not a government factory, it’s our factory. And so it’s really up to us where we want to put it and where we thought would be the best place to go. We actually went to, I think, about 40 different locations, 40 sites we looked at. Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, and South Australia. We went through, we didn’t actually go to the west, but we did most of the eastern central states. We looked at a bunch of different areas, but we had some criteria there that was important to us. One really was around, I suppose, proximity to orchard hills. And I’ll talk about the importance of that because the missile factory doesn’t actually have any energetics. It doesn’t have any explosives in the factory. We actually install those later at— on the Commonwealth side at Orchard Hills. But we wanted to be fairly close to Orchard Hills. We ideally wanted to be somewhere where close to a port and also an airbase or somewhere we can get potentially missiles in and out of the country. Livability was important. So as again mentioned, Kongsberg’s an old company. It’s also a company that’s really based in the— so Kongsberg, the company is based in the town of Kongsberg, just to make everything confusing. But really it’s very much a company town. So they are used to, again, people that have been working for the company for a long time. Sometimes there’s 4th and 5th generation employees in Kongsberg. But it’s around, we want to essentially, we’re training these people up. We want them to become— we want them to be happy where they are. There’s something about the Hunter where people come here, they love it and they never want to leave. That proximity to a good university and TAFE.

James [22:25]: Yeah.

John [22:26]: from a workforce development perspective. Yeah, and I think that’s it. And we, so we had a, again, it was a matrix and ran through that and Newcastle came up, or the Williamtown site there obviously. And obviously the HunterNet guys were sort of engaged around throwing that in as a potential opportunity. That came out on the top of the, you know, 42 or whatever sites that we looked at and we made the recommendation to the Commonwealth that we wanted to set up at Williamtown, and that recommendation was accepted.

James [22:56]: So beautiful. It definitely sounds like there’s some similarities between Kongsberg and also The Hunter. I’m going to come back to the people part in a second, but just the manufacturing environment itself. Talk to me about how big are we looking? Well, obviously you mentioned Kongsberg designed the factory over in Norway to produce at scale. We’re using that same approach here, a little bit smaller scale. Everything’s from go to whoa done within the manufacturing environment that you’re building. at Williamtown?

John [23:23]: Yeah, so this will be the first, this will be Kongsberg’s first missile factory outside of Norway ever. There will be another factory that’s probably going to be built in the US, but that’s at least 12 months sort of behind us. But essentially you’re right. So we’ve taken that blueprint that’s been done in Norway and yet, like I said, the capacity’s a little bit less than there, but essentially we can pick up all of the processes, procedures, the tooling. We’ve literally just done it. And I think that was very attractive to the Commonwealth because it was obviously a lower risk, than picking up and building a missile factory that was designed 20 years ago and pretty much had to start from scratch. So that has definitely, I suppose, de-risked it for us. But essentially we will become 3 factories that’ll operate as part of a global production network. But really we are a fully self-contained factory here that will do everything from procurement, planning, production, maintenance, quality, all those will all be done Yeah, there’s a standalone facility here in Williamtown.

James [24:23]: Sounds a really interesting business where it’s a smaller business to start with of a bigger pie. You’ve got your own P&L, you’re designing, it’s the first time doing it outside of Norway. You’re operating as that business standalone here, but with the design and all the learnings that have been done in Norway and obviously the big brand and company behind you. So it’s a really interesting proposition.

John [24:44]: Yeah, and to be honest, for me, it’s, if you told me 5 years ago we’d be building missiles in Australia, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I’m sort of still pinching myself that we’re in this position. But I think we are in a privileged position. Like I was mentioning, the great thing, these are 2 weapons that are at the start of their life. That’s the other, I suppose, really important thing for the Commonwealth is we’re not deciding we’re going to start building missile that’s yesterday’s technology and they’re happy for someone else to build it. The Norwegians are letting us build 2 of the most advanced cruise missiles in the world. Lots of the US Air Force haven’t even, you know, will be getting JSM. It’s a weapon that’s about, really about to enter service with the F-35. So to have that, I suppose to get that privilege to build those systems here and to set that factory up is a huge responsibility for us, but it’s a huge opportunity for us. And I think, you know, again, for the Hunter, you guys are right in the mix of it. And there’s, you know, it will be a very exciting place to work, you know, I think we are at the bleeding edge of what’s been done on the whole guided weapons piece.

James [25:45]: Yeah, I love that. And I love being able to share the story of something that’s being done on a global stage with some of the best technologies in the world being built here in the Hunter. I think what that means, and we’ll go back to the people side of things, is it’s going to have a great opportunity for a lot of people. You mentioned it’s not just engineers that are going in there. There’s a range of different type of, you know, opportunities there. But then also you mentioned before the TAFE and the university, so pathway opportunities for the next generation coming through to have that clear pathway into an operation that’s operating on a global scale. And there’s not 1,000 opportunities in the Hunter where you can genuinely do that. So I think that’s a great opportunity for the people of the Hunter and creating jobs locally. So what type of roles are we talking? You mentioned everything from planning, supply chain procurement through to engineering, the whole gamut?

John [26:38]: Yeah, the whole gamut. So we’ve obviously, we’re underway now. I mentioned this was announced 2 years ago. The factory’s really started construction in, I suppose, in anger sort of in Q3 last year. If you’re out driving past Williamtown Airport now, you can see it coming out of the ground very quickly. So we’ve started again, I suppose, hiring most of our senior managers. So our operations director here, our planning manager, our production manager. But essentially it’s a— we all have some, pretty much everything from HR, IT. We actually have quite a complicated IT solution being a very sort of modern manufacturing type capability. Yeah, security, planners, supply chain guys in terms of sourcing specialists, supply quality people as we’re building our supply chain here locally, technicians to build missiles, all the quality guys, the production engineers, Yeah, there’s a— it’s— so we’re about 100 people, but it’s a real mix. So like pretty much everything you need to run a factory from ordering, you know, all the way through to pushing and, you know, packaging up and pushing a missile out the back door of the warehouse and everything in between.

James [27:47]: How big do you envisage Kongsberg in the Hunter becoming?

John [27:50]: Well, I think we’ll be 100 at the factory. Obviously depends on throughput. Again, if, you know, if we need sort of additional shifts, then those numbers will will go up. We have some additional capacity in that building out there, but I see this as, you know, one of our, you know, 2 core sites in Australia. So I would love to expand that, I suppose, our Hunter presence with Kongsberg beyond just the factory. I think that will sort of depend on how we go with other sort of growth opportunities that we’re sort of pursuing here in Australia. But we also have, so most of the people in Newcastle are tied up with the factory, but there are a few people here that have actually moved up here for lifestyle and, but working on other programs as well. And so Like I said, it’s one of our key hubs here and yeah, I’d love to see this place grow and grow.

James [28:31]: How have you found finding talent locally in the Hunter? Are you bringing a lot of people externally in? ‘Cause I think one of the great things for the Hunter, sometimes you’ve got a new technology, a new business coming in and it attracts new talent to the region, new people for the region, new expertise. It’s great to learn from people outside the region sometimes, but then it’s also good for people who are local to have a different pathway. So I’d be interested is how’s that mix forming?

John [28:55]: Yeah, so we’ve actually been pretty lucky actually with the recruitment so far in the Hunter. We are getting good people here. We’re getting a lot of people have, I suppose, traditionally worked in Sydney but lived in the Central Coast or in the lower part of the, I suppose, south of Newcastle that are now pivoting ’cause they don’t have to travel to Sydney anymore if they can do a very similar sort of production or engineering role here with us. So we also have, we’ll have a couple of people in from Norway that’ll be embedded in the team here.

James [29:23]: Yeah.

John [29:23]: So sort of bring that, some of that deep expertise. Our supply chain manager at the moment is our one expat that’s here in Newcastle. But in general, we’ve been pretty good on— there’s always a couple of key roles that are sometimes challenging to find, but actually we’ve been very impressed with the people we’ve been getting here. And I think again, it’s actually, I’ve got a bunch of guys in Adelaide. South Australians are a little bit native and local. Newcastle, a bit the same, a little bit of a different culture, but—

James [29:52]: Yeah.

John [29:53]: both really professional that, yeah, I find that the team growing here has been nice to watch and they’re getting busier and busier as they, yeah, so as this program sort of proceeds on.

James [30:05]: Nice. I think it’d be great for local hunters to actually just look at the growth there and the opportunities. You mentioned before pathways, education, partnering and being close to a TAFE and a university. Are you doing anything in that space as yet?

John [30:18]: Yeah, we are. So we, We’ve made a big effort since the announcement of engaging with the University of Newcastle. And I think we actually sponsored their University of Newcastle rocketry team that went across to Europe last year. And we actually even got that new rocketry team into Kongsberg itself in Norway. So they actually did a side visit into Norway, which I think they found great. We actually have our first— we took our first intern in from the engineering department of Newcastle University last year, and he’s, I’m pleased to say, he’s now been offered a grad engineer role with us. We’ll look to do that again this year, bring on some more interns out of the university. As, like I said, as we’re starting to grow our workforce even more.

James [30:59]: Beautiful. I love that pathway program.

John [31:01]: Yeah, so that’s great. And obviously TAFE is the other piece as well. So like I said, we’ve been doing a lot of, I suppose a lot of our initial roles have been around getting the management team in and focusing on areas where we need to do a lot of planning like the IT and the security part and the HR piece obviously to grow the team. But, you know, when we start looking more at growing those technicians, these are the guys that are going to be, you know, building these small one-way aircraft. Yeah, that’s when I think Tate will start to play a more and bigger and bigger role in that as well. So far so good. I think now we’ve got a team set up here in Hunter. It’s sort of, you know, sort of managing a lot of that engagement. The big part for us now, you know, building the factories on a set of rails now that the guys at Newcastle Airport and Multiplex are doing a great job on that. It’s really for us has been focusing on that training. How do we, when do we send people to Norway? Pulling that together, those training packages, ’cause we haven’t done this before. They haven’t managed to pick up and transfer this type of technology to the other side of the world. And it’s around how do we, we don’t have a factory here yet to train on, so we need to send people to Norway to get that skills up. So it’s around getting that timing right. Recruitment and then skilling.

James [32:08]: Nice. Go back to Norway, understand how it’s all done, see it being done live, and then bring those skills back to Hunter. I love that.

John [32:15]: Exactly. Yep.

James [32:15]: You’ve mentioned the university and the TAFE there, like from a partnership perspective. Earlier on today, you mentioned partnerships in Adelaide to start with and having joint locations with partner organisations to build technology together. The Hunter, it is a place to succeed, is around building partnerships. I think it’s a lot of businesses that do well here. is about building partnerships locally. I know you mentioned HunterNet before. Important part of your game plan to grow in the Hunter is to lean in partnerships?

John [32:44]: So definitely HunterNet have been, they’ve been great since day one. So obviously Ivan Waterfield, Tim Owen, those guys have been super engaged. They’re fantastic advocates for the Hunter. And again, like I said, that’s where originally getting Getting that location in as one of the ones we were going to look at was really driven by HunterNet. And yeah, I think they’ve been very helpful for us, providing us with a great platform to engage with local companies and local organisations and to try and, again, we fully understand coming into the Hunter, you really need to create those partnerships, collaborate, let people know what we are doing. And I think we’ve done a good job of that, but that requires sort of constant engagement. But the Yeah, but HunterNet have been really good. They’ve been a great partner for us and we hope to continue our sort of engagement with those guys moving forward as this all continues to develop.

James [33:35]: Nice. Is there any other partnerships you’ve just been starting to lean into or explore?

John [33:40]: Yeah, so I think for us, I think they’re gonna naturally grow out of the activity. So we even talked before about, I suppose about skilling. We’re talking about the 100 people that we have coming in to work for Kongsberg. It’s interesting going out to the, again, to the site at the moment. We’ve got about, I think there’s gonna be about 500 people being used in the production of that facility. I think we’re spending about 85% of that significant construction cost ’cause we are, it is a high-end building. It’s more of akin to building another hospital from the services perspective.

James [34:10]: Yeah, right.

John [34:11]: But that’s all going, I think about 85% of that money’s all going into Hunter businesses. Next part of that is the supply chain. So again, I suppose a couple aspects of the supply chain. One is around supply chain around setting up. and equipping the factory.

James [34:23]: Yep.

John [34:23]: And that’s, I suppose, is going to be the focus for us in the near future. And then it’s around, yeah, bringing all those suppliers in for the actual making components of missiles themselves. So, you know, so I suppose the actual economic benefit of this sort of flows way out. It’s way, way more than the 100 people that put the stuff together. It’s around that supply chain. And that’s, that’s where you start talking about those partnerships. So we’ve got a great partnership with GeneApple with the facility, and obviously Multiplex have been doing a great job. But I think the more we do and as we’re looking for suppliers and partners to help us build this capability, that will continue to grow and grow.

James [35:02]: Beautiful. We’re nearly up and running with the factory. Once factory’s up and running, obviously some big wins to go between now and then. What does the future look like? What does the future in the Hunter here look like? Kongsberg obviously been around for a significant amount of time. Is there any vision for the future for Kongsberg? Designing technologies being used on a world stage is phenomenal. Is it more of the same?

John [35:24]: Yeah, I think, yeah, we’ve got, obviously there’s a fair bit on. So obviously real focus in getting up, you know, we’ll start production by the end of next year of our first missiles here in the Hunter. But I think there’s huge opportunities for us to expand our footprint here in the Hunter, obviously beyond that factory and potentially into other production. We’ve got a couple of interesting programs going on. We have been, we are in the, I suppose, been downselected to one of 2 potential solutions for Army’s 2nd Regiment of Long Range Fires. They are looking for a land-based maritime strike capability. We’ve been selected as one of the 2 possible solutions and we should hopefully find out in the next few months if we’re successful. But we essentially, I mentioned before, the Naval Strike Missile can be fired off trucks. So the US Marine Corps fire the NSM off a small Joint Land Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV. We’ve been working with Thales here in Australia and they make the Bushmaster vehicle down at Bendigo. They’ve got a utility variant of that that we’ve mated a twin-pack NSM launcher onto and we’re calling that system StrikeMaster. So that’s exciting for us. If we win that, that would be a large program for us that would bring some new technology capabilities into our business here. But I think we’ve got this great factory now where we’re building weapons. We look for how can we use those weapons on other platforms, but also looking at some of the other core areas where we have significant capability in Kongsberg around counter-UAS, around integrated air and missile defence, as I mentioned before. Yeah, we’re growing in terms of our product capabilities and what else can we bring here, but then also what can we actually, based on some of those technology tenets, what can we then partner with local companies and come up with other innovative solutions for the needs of the Defence Force?

James [37:14]: Yeah, I love that. Before you mentioned partnership twice and even the example about potentially partnering another vehicle with your, using the best of both worlds. So I love that. Appreciate you making the time, John, to share the story of Kongsberg and also what it means for the Hunter. I think it sounds like great opportunities for the whole supply chain here outside of not only the 100 people you’re hiring, but the greater Hunter. But for individuals that are interested, is there an easy way for them to follow the journey or potentially express their interest in joining your team?

John [37:43]: Yeah, no, thanks, James. Yeah, there definitely is. And we are obviously looking to attract more talent. As I mentioned, we are ramping up with our numbers this year and next year. So we have set up a careers page through the Kongsberg website and attached to that careers page is an expression of interest. Encourage people to, if they are interested in working with Kongsberg, then yeah, it’ll be great for them to jump on and maybe put an EOI in. Kongsberg website’s a great place to go and have a look and just see what other things we are doing as well. So encourage people to do that. I sort of mentioned the grad program before. We’ll look to do that again this year. With that, and I suppose just a broad thing too, obviously that facility for us, people will need to be Australian citizens. They will need to be able to hold a security clearance obviously to be able to operate in that. facility. So with our grad program, what we’ve been doing this year is we obviously go out for nominations, and then those people that we downselect for that program then have to go through and get their security clearance. And then obviously once that’s in place, then obviously we can bring them in and onto that program. So again, encourage, I suppose, all those bright engineers in their 3rd and 4th year, if they’re interested in learning a bit more about working with Kongsberg, then And yeah, the grad program’s a great way to go as well.

James [38:56]: Appreciate it. And I appreciate the opportunity for individuals and greater businesses here in the Hunter. Be keen to continue to follow the journey and see this success ongoing.

John [39:05]: Yeah, thanks James. Yeah, again, really appreciate the opportunity and I’d love to stay in touch and we can give a bit of update, I suppose, down the path of how we’re going and where we’re going moving forward. But thanks so much for your time.

James [39:15]: Thank you.

John [39:15]: Thanks James. Cheers.

James [39:19]: Thanks for listening to this episode of Engineering in the Hunter. This episode was brought to you by NTP Talent. If you’re building your engineering manufacturing teams in and around the Hunter, love to have a conversation with you at NTP Talent, where we’re helping teams across the Greater Hunter build and add talent to their teams. If you’d like some more information, visit our website ntp talent dot com dot au. This episode was produced by Day One. I’ll see you on the next episode.