Industry and trade

That Melbourne dominates the economic life of Victoria is not surprising—the city contains the bulk of the state’s population. It is Victoria’s financial centre and seat of government and is at the hub of the communications network linking the state to the rest of Australia and the world.

Melbourne: central business district Melbourne's central business district, as viewed from the Princes Bridge. © robepco/Fotolia

The city’s original core offers the most employment, but employment is growing at a faster rate in the outer suburbs. The central city mainly holds service activities such as banking, insurance, retailing, entertainment, public accommodation, and railway transportation. Surrounding this core is an incomplete ring of inner industrial suburbs, where the first clothing and metal factories were established in the 19th century. In the outer suburbs, particularly to the east, small manufacturing areas began to develop after World War II, when these suburbs could offer large areas of inexpensive land, few problems of traffic congestion, and an increasing population.

In the 1990s an ambitious project was launched to develop Docklands, a 500-acre (200-hectare) site of crumbling industrial and port facilities, into a multiuse complex featuring high-technology businesses, parks and public spaces, restaurants, a theme park, and apartment buildings and other housing. Docklands was expected to become home for 15,000 people and a workplace for 20,000. The first major facility, Colonial Stadium, a sports and entertainment venue, opened in 2000.

Melbourne’s most important industries, in terms of numbers employed, are metal processing, including the manufacture of transportation equipment, and engineering. Other major industries include textile and clothing manufacture; food processing; papermaking and printing; and the manufacture of chemicals, furniture, and building materials. Melbourne is also one of Australia’s leaders in the manufacture of computers and is developing as a centre for biomedicine and biotechnology.

The port of Melbourne occupies an area of level excavated land at the mouth of the Yarra River, southwest of the central business district. It is the nation’s largest general-cargo port. The chief products handled are foodstuffs, crude oil and petroleum products, chemicals, and iron and steel.

Beginning in the 1960s, large regional shopping centres sprang up throughout Melbourne’s outer suburbs, and the central city lost its dominant retail function. Nonetheless, major department stores and fashionable shops still exert a considerable pull on both residents and visitors.