Global engineering, technology, and manufacturing enterprises with headquarters in Adelaide, South Australia’s Tonsley Innovation District are among those extending their reach across the Pacific and setting up shop in American cities. One of the biggest commercial furniture fairs in the nation, NeoCon in Chicago, is where XFrame managing director Carsten Dethlefsen says they began in the US last year.
The Tonsley-based company has created a system of interconnecting plywood that can be used to construct studios, office pods, and shelters without requiring a single nail or screw. We had projects on our books within two weeks of that conference, according to Dethlefsen. “Speed to market there, we completed those tasks in four weeks. I believe that the sort of clients also took us by surprise. Dethlefsen claimed that after COVID-19, there was a “huge thirst” for their services since several offices required reconfiguration. Their innovation enables businesses to modify their fit-out in the future without incurring high remodeling costs. Dethlefsen claimed that there was a high demand for the building of trade show booths and retail display stands.
As a result, the business currently has manufacturing partners in Grand Junction, Colorado, Oregon, and Michigan. In order to accommodate the enormous demand for housing in the US, he said that businesses also needed XFrame to construct supplementary housing units. “We employed local manufacturing, local supply chains, and local labor to create the booth we designed for that convention, which was entirely produced in the United States. We created it, shipped it across the desert, and they pre-assembled it and set it up at the conference after cutting the components that were provided to our team. Dethlefsen oversees these initiatives from his office in the Tonsley Innovation District, a sizable region that was formerly a Mitsubishi vehicle assembly facility but is now populated by more than 1700 individuals in vital sectors including CleanTech and Renewable Energy, Medical devices, Mining, and Energy. While their Seattle branch enables a team of 12 people to install the systems abroad, the underlying technology is still developed in Adelaide. The US market is anticipated to contribute a higher portion of the company’s income in the next years due to the need for security and medical goods. According to Rowlands, “the revenue we obtain from the US will rise significantly quicker; it’s just a huge potential for us.” According to a government spokeswoman for South Australia, Tonsley’s influence on the state’s economy extends beyond domestic markets. Tonsley’s goal was to build a worldwide economic development engine. The expansion of so many of Tonsley’s companies into the US demonstrates the realization of that strategy, the spokeswoman said.
