Welcome to the 38th edition of AECascent!

2012 is set to be an interesting year and I think many of us wish we could look into a crystal ball to bring some clarity to the uncertain economic times ahead. With the European financial world hanging on the edge of disaster over the past couple of months, Australian markets continue to 'crack-on' in typical Aussie spirit, however this is largely due to the continued strength of the resources and manufacturing sectors, while all other sectors of the Australian economy struggle.

Widespread flooding in inland areas of Queensland and New South Wales over the past two weeks is also likely to produce impacts across the economy - once again it could be another hard year for the agriculture sector due to loss of crops and stock in the deluge. Resource sector construction and operations are also likely to be impacted by the natural disaster. 

Overall, this is not good news for rural towns of Queensland and New South Wales which not only need to recover homes and property losses but also need to pick up the additional slack fast in order to bounce back to normal agriculture and resource sector operating levels. The bottom line is the Queensland and New South Wales economies are likely to experience 'patchy' and varied impacts across a number of sectors including mining, construction, insurance, tourism, business, retail and agriculture.    

For AECgroup, 2012 is likely to prove a challenging (but exciting) year as AECgroup continues its commitment to clients, quality and expansion of domestic and international market presence.  

The close of 2011 saw AECgroup announce its new logo and corporate vision - "Outcome Driven". This has been followed by the company 're-branding'. Our clients will start to see the efforts of our design team with all new report covers, power point presentations, and marketing materials  currently in use across the company.  In this edition, Andrew Sivijs, Marketing Coordinator, introduces our new Tourism and Leisure Services brochure - which is testimony to the hard work of the Design team over the past month!  

This edition of AECascent also provides:

• An update on the Sydney Hotel Market undertaken by EPD
• Announcement of the key findings of the Water, Sewerage and Waste 2011-12 price Benchmarking publications for Queensland Councils
• Some insight into using web-based GIS tools to graphically represent socio-economic data
• An overview of the Cowboys 2012 Season photo shoot undertaken by the AECgroup design team!
• A feature article on the Importance of Market Research

I hope you enjoy this edition of AECascent!