Globalization Impacts on Amcor PLC

Implications of globalisation for Amcor PLC

The selected organisation, Amcor PLC could be recognised as one of the leading Australian packaging organisations in the global scenario which produces and develops products such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, beverages, closure services for food, specialty polymerized cartons, rigid polymer containers and flexible packaging solutions. For those who are seeking business dissertation help, analyzing Amcor PLC could offer the most valuable insights. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The head office of the company is currently situated at Warmley, Bristol, United Kingdom. The current employee strength of Amcor is 35211 personnel and the sales value generation, as off 2018 of the company, has been US$9 involving 2001 different locations within 40 different countries (assets.ctfassets.net, 2019).

The figure 1 demonstrates the locations and facility distribution framework of Amcor globally. Currently, Amcor operates two specific reporting segments in the format of Rigid Polymer packages and Flexible Packaging products. Specialty cartons are developed and supplied by flexible packaging services. Under the implications of globalised business exigencies, the flexible packaging services operate four international business units. These are Flexibles Europe and Middle East and Africa (these provide food and beverage packaging involving coffee, confectioneries, dairy products and animal fodder packaging services); Flexibles Americas (this segment produces healthcares and snack food based packaging); Flexibles Asia Pacific (home personal products and healthcare as well as processed food and beverages packaging) and Specialty Cartons meant for packaging of tobacco, confectionaries and snacks. For the financial year of 2018-2019, the Flexibles segment had generated US$6.5 billion in terms of sales revenue which represents 70% of global sales value of the company. The Flexibles related business segment of Amcor currently operates from 130 different facilities throughout 37 countries (assets.ctfassets.net, 2019).

On the other hand, the exports related to Rigid Plastics services are rigid polymer packaging products. In a similar business framework to that of the flexible packaging services, the rigid plastics also operate four different, international business units such as North America Beverages, North America Specialty Containers, Latin America and Bericap Closures. This segment involves 7000 approximate employees operating from 60 facilities which are situated at 12 different countries. The generated revenue, as off the financial year of 2018-2019, has been $2.8 billion which amounts to 30% of the organisational revenue of Amcor.

The strategy of Amcor has focused on the process of making effective and thoughtful choices which could differentiate the company from market rivals. There are three specific elements related to such an approach such as development of business portfolio, aspiration realisation and product as well as brand value differentiation.

In this context, the company has participated in the New Plastics Economy Initiative based objective of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), based at the UK. The purpose of EMF has been to accelerate the global economic transition into a circular format. The objective is to make various resources such as plastics to be reusable. Amcor is the first global packaging industry which has committed to work towards development of products which could be 100% recyclable and reusable by the year 2025. Amcor has thus contributed to the development of such a circular economy through dedication of particular expertise in the process (amcor.com, 2019).

The four elementary aspects of capital, land, working labour/human resource capability (both skilled and unskilled) and enterprising initiatives formulate the structure of factor endowments for any country such as Australia. The peripheral factors which influence the development and utilisation of the factor endowments could be understood as the geographical area of the national perspective, the climatic circumstances, political conditions, natural resource extents, demographic issues, social state of affairs, economic situations and entrepreneurial activities which could be prevalent within the national perspective.

From the research perspectives of Fenna (2016), Australia controls large endowment factors regarding natural resource potential which is comprised by valuable minerals including coal, gold, bauxite, iron ore and rate earth materials. The export business involving such mineral resource to various global destinations including the Asian countries has been well established. Regarding the factor endowments of China, it has been observed by Bennett & Nikolaev (2016), that, the country has an extensive workforce which is supported by the large population that the country has. The comparatively cheap labour force of China could perform as a competitively beneficial manufacturing market for various products such as clothing, footwear, textile and so on which are utilised as export products. Apart from this, the Chinese labour market does possess skilled working personnel who could manufacture electronic and electrical appliances, automobiles and various daily commodities which become effective export products. The contribution of Chinese endowment factors is the lowering of prices of the products which are manufactured at large scale and which have high demand throughout the world.

On the other hand, the endowment factor of India is also a skilled workforce given the second largest population being Indian and one direct implication of such an endowment factor has been the growth in soft power of India. This has been better explained by Cui & Chen (2016), as the development of a considerable industry in India which depends upon the high fluency of English amongst the Indians and this has the implication of development of a knowledge powerhouse in the Indian industries and this has been the reason that Indians constitute the highest number of professionals including technicians at the global scale. This has culminated in India becoming a technological hub globally which exports software and engineering talent even to the Silicon Valley.

In case of Singapore, the manufacturing capability possessed by the country could manufacture high quality products. Two factors are significant in this respect. The first one is that considerable numbers of blue collar employees could be found at Singapore and these are augmented by large number of immigrants from the neighbouring countries. The second factor has been the booming trade connections which have been facilitated by the workforces at Singapore due to the increasing immigration from neighbouring countries. In a comparative manner, Vietnamese economy is predominantly agriculture oriented. However, relatively extensive bauxite mining does take place in the country.

The country of Indonesia has extensive numbers of trained working personnel and this factor accounts for cheap labour availability and relatively lower production costs. At the conclusive stage, the endowment factors regarding the trade of individual countries contribute to the development of commercial potential for every country. These factors also enhance inter country trade ties.

As have been observed by Thow, Jones, Hawkes, Ali & Labonté (2017), Australia posses effective and strong trade relationships with the global markets and with the leading economies of the world. The unique geographical location of the continent has permitted Australia to be a major supplier to the various Asia Pacific regional markets as well as to become of the most significant importers of products produced in these regional and other markets. In this context, the Australian Governments have employed a number of different policies through which development and assistance provisioning to the Australian businesses and international trade relations could be performed. Primarily, the trade barriers are oriented towards providing effective protection to the domestic industries and consumer markets from the direct intrusion of foreign and overseas imports. The consolidation of such efforts is performed through the various regulatory obligations which the Australian Governments employ as trade barriers. These barriers and regulations are developed and designed to foster the possibility of greater fairness in the current hyper competitive market scenario. The direct effects of such trade barriers and trade protection regulations are according of sufficient protections to the relevant sections involved in such trade services and the ensuring of integrity of the related market segments (Bennett & Raab 2017). The business regulatory requirements are primarily determined by the state and territorial government agencies of Australia in tandem with the national governments of the country. Various international agreements also have some bearing on the Australian trade barriers and regulatory framework development.

The various regulations and trade barriers are related to enforcement of the provisions mentioned under various legislative promulgations of Australia such as the Australian Intellectual Property Laws, the export and import service laws, the fair practices in trade and environmental management related laws and the financial reporting oriented legal stipulations. These legal stipulations involve issues such as protection of patents and trademarks, registration of domain names, design and copyright protection, enforcement of competition regulations regarding consumer service laws, regulations involving product liability and environmental legislations and privacy management laws which are observed at Australia. Furthermore, the trade barriers which could be prompted by the Australian governments, pertain to the enforcement of duties and tariffs as well as import regulations, the Business Activity Statement requirements and accounting standards management within the financial reporting frameworks of Australia.

Furthermore, the Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) is the federal resource management agency which has been made responsible for the enforcement of quarantine and barrier related regulations within the food import sector. Such responsibilities involve issuing of permits and holding inspections of different import shipments. Australia has been a signatory to the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of World Trade Organisation and much of the regulations and trade barriers have to be construed in consideration of the obligations pertaining to the individual agreements related directives under the overarching framework of the AASPM (Bown, 2017). The goods imported from overseas trading sources to Australia require classificatory designations and the procedures are reliant on the declarations by the importers concerning their self-assessment regarding the imported goods. Further, the import restrictions could be imparted through the Australian Border Force agencies which also reserve the right to be briefed by the declarations of the importers.

Reference List

Fenna, A. (2016). Shaping comparative advantage: The evolution of trade and industry policy in Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 618-635.

Bennett, D. L., & Nikolaev, B. (2016). Factor endowments, the rule of law and structural inequality. Journal of Institutional Economics, 12(4), 773-795.

Thow, A. M., Jones, A., Hawkes, C., Ali, I., & Labonté, R. (2017). Nutrition labelling is a trade policy issue: lessons from an analysis of specific trade concerns at the World Trade Organization. Health promotion international, 33(4), 561-571.

Bennett, C. J., & Raab, C. D. (2017). The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective. Routledge.

Bown, C. P. (2017). Mega‐Regional Trade Agreements and the Future of the WTO. Global Policy, 8(1), 107-112.

Cui, C., & Chen, S. (2016, December). A RCA Analysis of China's Competitive Advantage to Export Textile and Apparel to Australia. In 2016 International Conference on Education, Management Science and Economics. Atlantis Press.

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