Inside the factory
Taking a tour of one of Australia’s most successful manufacturing companies
You’d be forgiven for driving past the golden child of Australian manufacturing, hidden as it is in an assuming dull industrial building in an ordinary industrial estate in Sydney’s west.
But behind the grey walls is a high tech factory floor and a team of worker bees that are proving the naysayers wrong about manufaturing in Australia — it can be done, and it might actually be cheaper in the long run.
Welcome to the RØDE Microphone factory in Silverwater, a 75,000 square foot state of the art facility that is manufacturing some of the best microphones in the world. (And yes, I can say that having used nearly every microphone under the sun during my time in audio production).
I was lucky enough to visit the factory thanks to UTS Hatchery connections. The UTS Hatchery is a pre-incubator for UTS students located in the basement here at Building 15. I was initially interested in the tour because I’m an audio nerd, but what was actually more interesting is how RØDE has managed to maintain a foothold against China when it comes to manufacturing.
What surprised me was the amount of machinery in the factory. It is amazing to know that something as intricate as a microphone can be en masse by a machine. In one room there were shelves filled with sheets of microphone boards, and hundreds of these can be made at a time. This is all done with one engineer supervising the machine. No labour = low cost. You can watch RØDE MD Peter Freedman showing off the machinery here.
The machinery at RØDE is worth millions of dollars, but it’s an investment for quality and price. For example, the plastic made for the microphones are made in machines dedicated to making plastics for mics. If RØDE outsourced this part of the process, an overseas machine would produces their plastics, along with plastics for washing machines, cars and who knows what else. These all require specific melting temperatures, and this means the room for error creeps in.
In addition, it actually becomes cheaper to make plastic in-house in the long run. It’s about 5c per part made in Australia versus 50c made overseas. It sounds like a small difference, but it all adds up when you are trying to keep prices down.
Keeping everything in-house also means RØDE has control over the quality every step of the way. If you do ever have a problem with your mic, you can take it back to RØDE and using the serial number on it they can track the quality assurance process it went through. It’s also the reason why RØDE can offer a 10 year warranty on many of their products.
By far the coolest part on the tour was being sealed in the anechoic chamber.
An anechoic chamber is a room designed to completely absorb sound, and RØDE uses this room for testing their mics. You can see in the picture above that the walls are shaped like cones, and the floor is suspended almost like a trampoline, all to absorb room sound. It’s like stepping inside a seashell, you can hear the blood rushing through your ears and words are completely muffled.
We all keep hearing that manufacturing in Australia is dead, and it’s all about tech. But RØDE is showing that a combination of innovation, technology and manufacturing can create jobs in Australia. Recent reports even show Australian manufacturing may be bouncing back. But it requires highly skilled engineers and future thinking directors and managers to make a product 100% Australian made.
