Economic and Business Reporter
At Hypro's light manufactoring plant on the edge of Wilberforce, a machine seals and stacks 2.5 tonnes of dog food an hour without a person touching it. Ingredients drop into a hopper, cook, then get bagged, palletised and shrink-wrapped. The whole line is monitored from a control room that looks more like an air-traffic tower than a feed shed. Across the site, the company turns out around 10 tonnes an hour.
This was the backdrop the State Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane chose to sell its tax policy.
Ms Kellie Sloane MP and Member for Hawkesbury Robyn Preston toured the family-owned petfood manufacturer last week to promote the Liberals and Nationals' payroll tax plan and to find a local employer willing to support it. In Hypro's owners, they found two.
The policy, released on 30 June, would raise the payroll tax threshold from $1.2 million to $1.5 million and reduce the rate from 5.45 per cent to 4.75 per cent for businesses with an Australian payroll under $10 million. Both thresholds would then be indexed to inflation to prevent bracket creep. Sloane and Preston say the changes would make NSW the state with the most competitive payroll tax regime.
Hypro's owners backed it without hesitation. They told the Gazette that every worker carries roughly a 40 per cent overhead on top of wages, with payroll tax one part of that. According to the company's own numbers, the saving would offset more than half the cost of an additional worker. For a business that says it is always hunting for ways to trim costs and grow, that is the pitch landing where the Opposition wanted it.
The jobs are why the visit works as a photo opportunity. Hypro employs 80 locals and says it wants to add another 25-30. The staff are long-term. The operator in the control room was a local who knew the plant inside out, and the maintenance crews who keep the automation running are Hawkesbury residents trained in-house. The factory floor was spotless, closer to a hospital than a mill, and the owners were keen to walk through the quality-assurance regime behind it. Hypro runs its own trucks to move the product out.
The company grew out of a stockfeed business started by farmers in the late 1990s and now exports across South-East Asia and the Pacific, including to Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. It is believed to be one of the largest private manufacturers in the Hawkesbury. The owners want to buy neighbouring land to expand the plant, which they say would mean more jobs again. Hypro is estimated to add between $8 million and $9 million per year to the local economy once wages and flow-on spending at local shops and suppliers are accounted for.
Despite the enthusiasm on the factory floor, a few points are worth keeping in mind. This is an Opposition policy, not a government one. With the next state election due in March 2027, the payroll tax plan is a promise conditional on the Liberals and Nationals winning office. The 30 June release does not quantify the changes or explain how the lost revenue would be covered. The payroll tax announcement sits alongside a broader cost-of-living package that includes a $100 car registration rebate and the return of the Regional Seniors Travel Card.
None of which changes the arithmetic for a business like Hypro. A lower rate is a lower cost, and a lower labour cost is the sort of thing that tips a decision on whether to hire one more local. Whether it tips enough of those decisions across the state to justify the forgone revenue is the argument the Opposition will need to win between now and the election. On Wilberforce Road, at least, it found a willing witness.
