Heavy manufacturing would likely be wiped out if Australia gets its planned carbon border tax regime wrong, Orica chief executive Sanjeev Gandhi has warned, while rubbishing the notion the country could take on Japan, Korea and China in battery manufacturing.

“If you have an open market, but there’s no protection for product coming into the country from jurisdictions who do not have a carbon regime, there’s no way that manufacturing will survive in this country,” said Mr Gandhi, whose company is the world’s biggest manufacturer of explosives and owns carbon-intensive plants in Newcastle and Gladstone.