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According to a quarterly Business Conditions Survey by peak industry body Business NSW, the New England North West has the highest business confidence of any region in the state.
Tamworth Business Chamber president Matthew Sweeney delivered the news to a who's who of Tamworth's tycoons at the chamber's annual State of the State leadership lunch.
"We currently have the highest business confidence of each region within NSW, and it's due to be even better next quarter, which is fantastic," Mr Sweeney said.
Business NSW measures business confidence on a scale from -100 to +100. Business confidence across the state has been mostly in the negatives since 2019.
The score that landed the New England North West in the top spot was -31.3.
The lunch's main speaker, Member for Tamworth Kevin Anderson, said the uptick in confidence for the region's businesses is a direct result of years of investment into infrastructure.
"I'm a firm believer that government should be the enabler, then private investment follows. Like the $35 million upgrade of the Westdale Railway Line which enabled private investment to run freight trains back into Tamworth and our city," Mr Anderson said.
The findings are backed up by a recent report from CreditorWatch which found Narrabri/Moree has some of the lowest rates of business closures in regional NSW, with Tamworth not too far behind.
"What's interesting is when we break that down by industry type, we've got two types that are quite low-confidence: transport is quite low at the moment and mining is due to drop off the cliff next quarter," Mr Sweeney said.
"Luckily those two are represented in the room and talking today so we'll ask them what's happening in their industries."
Those two guest speakers were Qube Logistics general manager of supply chain solutions, Sean Hovey, and CEO of the NSW Minerals Council, Stephen Galilee.
Both businessmen provided insights into the challenges facing their industries, and argued there are silver linings among the clouds.
For Mr Hovey, that's reaping rewards from the new Tamworth Intermodal Freight Facility.
"Something we worked really closely with the local council on is building something that's scalable. We're coming up to what looks like will be a fantastic grain season from an export point of view, and that's gonna put a hell of a lot of pressure on everyone's supply chains," he said.
"The exciting bit for us is we can run longer trains into Tamworth and we can run more services to meet that pressure."
Since opening in November last year, Qube Logistics has run around 5500 shipping containers through the Tamworth site, doing the work of about 50 trucks with each train.
On the mining side, Mr Galilee from the Minerals Council said business confidence for the industry is in decline, but demand for its products - particularly coal - has never been higher.
"A lot of the world is continuing to use coal, and they want to use our coal because ours is the best," he said.
"Arguably the quality of coal we have in NSW means that it's probably going to be some of the last coal in the world to be phased out compared to others, particularly in relation to its emissions profile."
Australia exported $127.4 billion worth of coal in 2022-23, capitalising on ongoing demand from Asia.
A substantial portion of that coal was mined here in NSW.