Special Reports

Facing adversity is nothing new to Edward Rigg, having grown up on a farm, often in drought conditions, at Coorow, north of Perth.

Finding a balance between work and life outside of business appears to be some way off for the entrepreneurial panellists at the WA Business News Success and Leadership event.

Brett Martin’s Trailcraft group of companies manufactures aluminium trailer boats, boat trailers and caravans and sells them through five of its own retail stores and 27 independently owner retail outlets across Australia.

The 2007 WA Business News 40under40 Awards program was launched at a breakfast forum featuring four high-profile past winners.

Staff retention and costs issues associated with the state’s protracted economic growth were among the key issues raised by panellists at the breakfast forum.

His role as a technology leader in Western Australia was well-known when Michael Malone was crowned 40under40 1st Amongst Equals earlier this year; a far cry from when he graduated from university in the early 1990s, when few knew anything about the inter

As a decision nears on the environmental viability of Gorgon, WA Business News reports on speculation surrounding the massive gas project.

As managing director of a big engineering business, you might think Peter Meurs gets his biggest buzz from winning multi-million dollar contracts.

Peter Meurs believes local companies seeking work on big resource and infrastructure projects need to ensure they meet the needs of project developers, rather than relying on work coming to them simply because they are Australian.

WorleyParsons has been one of the big winners from the resources boom, growing to be Australia’s largest engineering firm, and the Perth office under Peter Meurs has played a key part in that success.

All the stars continue to be aligned in favour of the Western Australian economy, on the back of a fourth successive year of above 30-year average real global economic growth.

Significant increases in net interstate and overseas migration have been the main contributors to the 1.9 per cent WA population increase in 2005-06.

Western Australia has all the ingredients the rest of the world wants and is willing to pay for. This has been the recipe for the success of the state, which is showing up its counterparts in every domestic economic indicator from house prices to state

Overwhelming interest in Western Australian property appears to have pushed the state’s median house price above $400,000 for the first time, and almost doubled the price of land in the year to June 2006.

The impact of booming economic conditions and high commodity prices led to a stellar year for the state’s finances in 2005-06, with a record $2.26 billion operating surplus.

It has been a year of record-breaking results in the resources sector as economic powerhouses China and India fuel demand and world prices for the majority of commodities continue their upward trajectory.

Strong wages growth has outpaced the rise in Perth’s Consumer Price Index, which rose by 4.2 per cent through the year to the March quarter 2006, much higher than the national increase of 3 per cent.

We all know that Australia is benefiting from another resources boom – the latest in a long history of export-orientated, resource-led growth spurts that we have experienced since the gold rush of the 1850s.

Western Australia recorded its second highest winter crop in 2005-06 at 14.4 million tonnes (mt), just trailing 2003-04 with 16.7mt.

The Western Australian economy has gone through an exceptional phase of economic growth and development over the past four years, and has gained further momentum so far in 2006.

Western Australia’s strong economy has produced an extraordinary fall in the state’s unemployment rate to less than 4 per cent, a level many economists thought would never be reached.

Western Australia’s burgeoning economy shows no sign of abating, with business investment spurring on record levels of growth for 2006.

Just a couple of years ago, the closing of a big manufacturing plant would have caused much political anguish.

The shortage of skilled labour is the biggest issue facing many Western Australian businesses. WA Business News reports on some of the innovative responses to the skills crisis.

Western Australian employers have responded to the skills shortage by making staff recruitment a continuous process.

Email has changed the way we communicate at work and in our personal lives, but the technology has also given rise to problems, particularly in the office. WA Business News looks at the issues to be overcome and how WA businesses are going about it.

Perth seems an unlikely place for the development of tools to manage a globally ubiquitous product such as Microsoft Outlook, but by some coincidence two local firms have based their time management solutions around this common software.

The internet may have revolutionised information access, but email has gone one step further in the way it has broken down traditional hierarchies, offering almost unfettered access to all.

The Gorgon LNG project has provided a $1 billion boost to the Western Australian economy, and it hasn’t even started yet.

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry stands to become the most significant part of the resources sector if projects proposed for waters off the coast of Western Australia come to fruition.

While the iron ore and oil and gas sectors dominate the outlook for project investment, Western Australia is in line to host a diverse range of projects in other sectors worth more than $5 billion.

BHP Billiton’s Ravensthorpe nickel project is in line for the invidious honour of having the biggest cost blow-out of all the major projects in Western Australia in recent years.