Kwinana Industrial Area: agglomeration economies and industrial symbiosis on Western Australia's Cockburn Sound

ABSTRACT

The Kwinana Industrial Area is nearing its 60th anniversary as a resource-processing industrial cluster. Its longevity may be understood in the traditional terms of industrial inertia resulting from three types of agglomeration economies: localisation, transfer, and urbanisation economies. However, industrial ecology provides an alternative approach to describe the environmental impacts of interplant linkages: utility/infrastructure sharing, supply-chain synergies, by-product exchanges, and joint provision of services. The agglomeration economies and industrial symbiosis approaches to clustering are compared using interplant relationships drawn from the case of Kwinana.

KEY WORDS:

• Kwinana
• Western Australia
• industrial location
• agglomeration economies
• industrial ecology
• regional synergies
• transfer economies
• localisation economies
• urbanisation economies

Acknowledgements

This work was done while I was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia and I am grateful to my many generous hosts and gracious colleagues. Conversations with Professor Matthew Tonts must be singled out as the inspiration for this paper. Librarians Maxine Tedesco at the University of Lethbridge Library; Graeme Rymill and Michelle Mahoney at the Reid Arts and Business Library; and Trudy Parker at the Atrium Library, Department of Environment and Conservation provided superb professional reference services. The staff and resources of the J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History, State Records Office of Western Australia, the Research Library of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, and the Fremantle and Kwinana Public Libraries provided indispensable resources in the secondary data collection. Chris Oughton, Director of the Kwinana Industries Council, Lisbeth Randers, Project Officer of the Symbiosis Center at Kalundborg, and other respondents were generous with their time, knowledge and resources. Mei Ruu Kok did a fine job on the cartography. Diane Clark provided her usual astute editorial comments.