Gone Is Australia's Last Frame Manufacturer

Irene Luthy with an Optex frame.

"There is no future in sight for spectacle manufacturing in Australia. For the past 52 years, Irene Luthy’s factory, Optex Eyewear, has produced up to 2000 frames a week, 48 weeks a year. But soon, she will be lucky to be making any frames at all," starts the Brisbane Times Business Day post. "When Mrs Luthy, 82, moved her business from Melbourne to Dubbo in 1972, she landed a winning contract: the NSW Spectacles Program, a scheme providing free spectacles for disadvantaged people in that state. Chinese imports were on the rise and local frame manufacturers were beginning to collapse, yet Ms Luthy’s affordable, basic, plastic frames were in demand. But on July 1, after 22 years of partnership, the NSW Department of Family and Community Service determined that Ms Luthy and administrator VisionCare NSW had failed to win the tender and appointed Vision Australia as the new administrator. The decision has put Australia’s last major frame factory out of business." Read more.