Anne Maree Weston is a Senior Investment Specialist in the Agribusiness and Food sectors. She is a highly experienced finance and economics professional who has spent over 30 years’ working with corporate finance teams and related professionals, particularly in the agriculture, property, tourism and leisure sectors.

Anne Maree comes to Austrade from a role as Director, Corporate Strategy, Platform Agribusiness – a boutique agribusiness company established to develop a range of agricultural projects for investors and to manage the assets. Since 2010 she has also been an independent member of the Compliance Committee for the S&P/ASX 200-listed Cromwell Property Group, specialising in property investment and funds management.

Prior to this, Anne Maree was general manager at Rural Management Partners. During this time she worked on a joint venture to establish AgCapital, a specialist agricultural funds management company targeting institutional investors.

Anne Maree has a Bachelor of Economics from James Cook University and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Corporate Governance from the Governance Institute of Australia.

Paul is the Commercial Manager for the port of Mackay and has been in this role for the past 7 plus years. Paul is responsible for the commercial leasing and management of the port’s extensive land holdings, port pricing and provides strategic advice on port land and marine infrastructure development. Prior to this Paul had a long career in State Government roles in the ports and small craft areas as well as being a consultant for a couple of years involved with the strategic development of marinas for the private sector and government.

Andrew Davis has worked for the Gladstone Ports Corporation for nearly Seven years starting at the Gladstone Marina as Superintendent for 12 months before taking up the position as Business Operations Manager.

This role was for both Business Operations and Business Development over the three ports, Port Alma/Port of Gladstone and overseeing the Port of Bundaberg.

He also remained the manager of the Gladstone Marina and the Port Central area in this time.

Andrew has now moved into the Business Development area in a full time position with the aim to further diversify the Gladstone Port Corporation and potentially developing one of the largest container ports in Queensland.

Andrew has been working on other areas of imports/exports for break bulk/vehicle imports /mining equipment/agricultural/ cattle/boxed meat and other smaller mineral exports and major distribution centres such as Kmarts, Coles, Bunnings, Aldi etc.

Andrew has a passion for the whole of the central Queensland area and is fully committed to all of his challenges. Andrew’s previous background is from the marine industry as vessel master and marine engineer of which leads to his passion boating /fishing /vessel restoration and motorcycle touring.

Wayne is an international and domestic transport specialist having worked in various points around the globe and Australia. Wayne’s career in transport started very early in life with his father dragging him to some of his shifts at Darling Harbour Port in Sydney during school holidays, where Wayne  begrudgingly developed a fascination with international transport and trade.

During studying for his customs brokers licence Wayne decided to move into a role that gave him direct hands on experience with shipping as an export operations officer with Burns Phillip Shipping, packing export consolidation boxes into Papua New Guinea. With over 35 years of transport experience Wayne has moved through the ranks to become the Line Manager at Mariana Express Lines where trade facilitation is one of the main remits of the role.

When not facilitating trade, Wayne spends his free time teaching his two young boys to surf, trying to outplay them at basketball and chasing them down during kick to kick sessions.

If you don’t get a chance to speak with Wayne during the forum please contact him via e mail : w.smith@pae.marianaship.com

Alan, together with his wife Laurel, have established several business ventures including Oaklink and Stent Smith Pastoral. Most recently Alan has commenced development of the CQ Inland Port project, a purpose built intermodal facility at Yamala. Now under construction, the port will be a road rail hub with major industrial sites, linking the agricultural and resource areas across Central Queensland.

Justin Gardiner is Capital Delivery Manager (Queensland) at GrainCorp, where Justin manages a small team of project managers and contractors working on a multitude of Safety, Compliance, Stay in Business, Strategy and Business Improvement Capital programs.

Justin has worked with big defence and government organisations in the past including Tenix/BAE and Lockheed Martin, starting off as an Electronics/Electrical Tradesperson. Growing up on the land, working for GrainCorp was a natural fit. Starting in 2011 as Central Queensland Ports Maintenance Manager, he has used his working experience to deliver reliability and efficiency in plant and equipment to meet grain customer expectations at the Ports.

Recently Justin has taken on the role of Capital Delivery Manager and relocated from Mackay to Toowoomba. His goal is to deliver the same outcomes for projects across the QLD grain network – maximising the customer experience while achieving business objectives, from concept through to whole lifecycle.