The Hunter Region has always been a great place to live, but now it's also a great place to do business.
The Newcastle Herald and Out of the Square Media have partnered to showcase the incredible businesses that have grown from within the region, or relocated here to flourish, in a new Innovation Ready series.
Out of the Square Media managing director Marty Adnum said Newcastle and the Hunter always had the lifestyle to attract people, and now the region's infrastructure had matured to the point it was drawing big business.
"We've got the airport, world-class university, fantastic port, we're two hours from Sydney, we've got this great lifestyle - where else in Australia has the ideal mix?" Mr Adnum said.
"In my mind, all the ingredients are coming together. Go back 20 years, and people felt like they had to leave to expand their business."
Hunter Innovation Festival chair Alex Brennan said Newcastle was unique because its demographic almost exactly mirrored that of the nation's.
"Businesses can come here to test and prove a concept, and if it works here, it can work nationally," Mr Brennan said.
"We really do punch above our weight when it comes to founding and building innovative businesses with products that can have an impact on a global scale."
Launching today, the Innovation Ready series will profile, in the coming weeks, more than a dozen businesses in the Hunter Valley, who are leading the nation and the world in their respective industries.
Out of the Square Media has created videos for each business - which range from artificial intelligence engineers to electric car converters - that can be viewed at newcastleherald.com.au or at innovationready.com.au.
Robotic Systems director Adam Amos said, in Sydney, a lot of the good opportunities were already sewn up, but Newcastle "is a city for the young".
"In Newcastle, it's quite different from Sydney in terms of degrees of separation between you and decision makers," Mr Amos said.
"As long as I'm the director of Robotic Systems, we're going to be here."
Mr Brennan agreed the "one degree of separation" was a game changer.
"I've lived in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong - if I wanted to meet a CEO, there was seven degrees of separation," he said.
"To get to the CEO, I had to have five or six meetings to work my way up the food chain, gaining trust along the way.
"In Newcastle, it's one degree of separation, you can just call the person you want to speak to."
International engineering firm Ampcontrol is based at Tomago and employs more than 1100 employees, with well over half of those within the Hunter
Ampcontrol chief executive Rod Henderson said having a world-class institute like the University of Newcastle on its doorstep had helped the company be a global player.
"The fact that we can draw upon the talents that sit within the school of engineering - or science and environment - is definitely a plus for us," Mr Henderson said.
"To have the support of the university for manufacturing, and wanting to be engaged with industries as much as they do is an absolute bonus.
Siobhan Curran runs UoN's Integrated Innovation Network, which helps local entrepreneurs turn their ideas into a marketable product. The program has accelerated more than 130 ideas, raising $42 million in funding and creating almost 250 jobs.
"The potential of the hunter region is limitless," Ms Curran said.
"We have all the right ingredients to play on the main stage of the world. "
Bykko founder Monica Zarafu started her shareable e-bike business in Sydney in 2014, but Newcastle's work-life balance and strategic location convinced her to relocate the entire operation.
"The city has a pretty good infrastructure for business logistics," Ms Zarafu said.
"We have the airport, we have highways, we have trains to Sydney and we have the Port of Newcastle. It has a good economic growth perspective."
Teralba-based Australian EV Specialists director Edwin Higginson, who helps businesses electrify their vehicle fleets, also praised the city's strategic location.
"You can get up to Brisbane within 10 to 11 hours, same down to Melbourne, so it's all within easy reach, all within one shift in a truck," Mr Higginson said.
Perhaps HeyZomi founder Mika Koelma - who has created Australia's first reusable menstrual disc - put it best.
"In Newcastle, there's this buzz, there's this energy that something new is about to begin," she said.
"People are coming together and I feel like I'm a part of that as well, and that's really exciting and supportive when you're in a start-up and doing something new."
