Reimagining our Industrial Areas

Globalisation, technological advancements, and climate change, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have significantly transformed Melbourne’s economy. There has been a shift towards a more ‘knowledge-based’ economy with industry sectors that employ specialist skills and innovation.

With an established industrial legacy, strategic location, and skilled workforce, Hobsons Bay can capitalise on these broader economic trends and create a path to a more sustainable and resilient economy.

Due to a decline in the traditional manufacturing sector there is now opportunity for new and emerging industry sectors to locate in and transform our key industrial precincts.

Hobsons Bay City Council is committed to working with existing and new industries to diversify employment offerings and ensure industries have a positive impact on our city.

We aim to increase local jobs and diversify our industry sectors, become an environmental leader, balance job growth with community impacts and continue to be a major economic force in the Victorian economy.

A Statement of Opportunity

The Reimagining our Industrial Areas project produced a 'Statement of Opportunity' document to help shape the future of our key industrial precincts and set a new policy direction.   

Consultation on the 'Statement of Opportunity' document was undertaken over a five-week period from 11 October to 14 November 2021.

Click here to view the feedback summary.(PDF, 389KB)  

The document was updated in response to feedback received. 

Key changes included:

• The addition of a ‘Why Williamstown North’ and a ‘Why Brooklyn’ section to identify the opportunity that exists in these key industrial precincts.
• The renaming of the ‘recycling and repurposing’ sector to the ‘circular economy’ sector to better reflect Council's aim to attract businesses at the end of the recycling process, that use recycled inputs to create new products, that require more technical employment and that generate less offsite impacts.

Click here to review the updated document.(PDF, 20MB)  

In addition to reimagining the future of our industrial areas, we will continue to support our existing businesses and grow our activity centres. Our activity centres deliver jobs for our community in sectors such as healthcare, the visitor economy/tourism, arts and culture and education. Our Activity Centre Strategy 2019 will continue to guide the growth and development of these commercial areas and we will review our 2015-2020 Economic Development Strategy to provide a new economic narrative for the city. 

For more information