Brambles CEO Graham Chipchase calls for investment in long-term infrastructure

Graham Chipchase is calling for Australia to invest in long-term infrastructure that sets the nation up for sustainable future growth.

Brambles CEO Graham Chipchase

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity? This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

I think there is an opportunity for Australia to invest in long-term infrastructure that sets the nation up for sustainable future growth. A good example is investment in multimodal transport infrastructure that not only delivers greater economic efficiencies but would also substantially reduce emissions for many businesses and industries that rely on transport and logistics.

Geopolitics

Will a Donald Trump presidency have a potential impact on your business or sector (tariffs or streamlined regulation)? Does geopolitics drive a bigger part of your decision-making?

Our business is heavily weighted to consumer staples, where consumption tends to be relatively resilient to political swings and cycles, so we would expect the recent election to have less impact on our business compared to other companies. It will be interesting to see how consumer sentiment in the US responds over the medium term, knowing that confidence will likely mirror economic performance. Tariffs targeting imports are also unlikely to have a major impact on our business, given the limited intercontinental flows of goods on our platforms and the resulting shift to US domestic manufacturing.

More broadly, while geopolitical tensions do have the potential to cause disruption, my sense is that business’s experience through the pandemic prompted more focus on strengthening resilience and there is a heightened awareness of risks.

People

Has your organisation’s approach to flexible working - including working from home - evolved during the year. Is this likely to change further into 2025?

It’s now approaching five years since we implemented hybrid working across our global business. Over the years we’ve had the benefit of reviewing and assessing how it works in practice and are now in a comfortable place. Other initiatives have also helped broaden our understanding of what flexibility can look like.

We are really mindful that not all our roles can flex and that our plant-based workforce need to perform their critical role from our service centres.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

AI, and advanced analytics more broadly, is something we’ve been embedding across the business over the past couple of years and we’ve seen the technology deliver benefits. Machine learning and predictive capabilities have played a role in improving our efficiencies, including detecting and correcting anomalies with customer transactions, as well as optimising and directing our collection and recovery of assets.

We know there is enormous opportunity still to be unlocked by scaling this across our global business, and we’re looking forward to uncovering new applications for these technologies as our capabilities in this area build.