From toasters to planes with some top surf gear thrown in, there are plenty of global success stories to come out of Australia. Click or scroll through as we take a look at the most impressive brands to have taken their wares to the world. All figures are in Australian dollars unless otherwise stated.

Back in 1932, Breville started life as a radio and then mine detector manufacturer. After World War II, the company became renowned for its small kitchen appliances. It all went gangbusters in 1974 when the company introduced the first-ever sandwich toaster, selling 400,000 units in Australia alone in its first year.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for Breville to break into sandwich-loving Britain, soon becoming a household name that is still a go-to brand today. In fact, Breville products are sold in more than 30 countries worldwide, with its coffee machines hailed for their top-notch quality. Today the company is valued at $2.26 billion.

Founded in 1990 by Lorna Jane Clarkson (pictured) at home in Brisbane, the namesake sports brand was a quick winner in activewear fashion circles. The brand's unique selling point was that it catered for sporty women who also wanted to be stylish. Unusually the company has never been a big spender on advertising, instead preferring for word to spread purely based on customer reviews.

These days, Lorna Jane turns out a staggering 70-100 new designs each month. When its “Flashdance” pants were released in 2014, a pair was bought every 27 seconds by customers all over the world. The word of mouth promotion seems to have paid off, as the company makes annual revenues of $200 million, according to industry experts quoted in Financial Review.

Stationery brand Smiggle has only been around since 2003, when the first store opened in Melbourne. The creators, Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang, saw a gap in the market for fun stationery for school-age children and decided on Smiggle, a mash-up of smile and giggle, as the brand's name.

In 2007, Just Group bought the company for $29 million and in 2008 Smiggle started a global takeover. The stationery store now sells its jazzy wares in hundreds of stores across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and southeast Asia. Its global sales hit $293 million in 2018 – a record according to Premier Investments, the parent company of Just Group.

Amcor's beginnings lie with Samuel Ramsden, a young stone mason from England who arrived in Australia in the 1860s. On moving to Victoria, Ramsden founded the state's first paper mill. Over a century later, the company expanded its range beyond paper production and the 2000s saw Amcor transform into one of the world's biggest packaging businesses.

Today Amcor is continuing to expand by acquiring other multimillion-dollar companies and it's ranked as one of the world's top five packaging companies. The business has more than 50,000 employees across more than 40 countries and it's currently valued at US$16.4 billion (AU$24bn). At the moment the company is working towards reducing its environmental impact with a pledge to make all of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.

Founded in the small city in Queensland from which it took its name, Bundaberg is a drink that used what was available locally in abundance: sugar cane. Neville and Gladys Fleming decided to take advantage of the sweet stuff and started brewing ginger beer at a small factory they'd purchased near their home. Growth was slow but steady, initially only catering to locals, then to the rest of Queensland and finally, in the late 1980s, to the whole of Australia. 

In 1995, the Bundaberg company made its “Brewed To Be Better” product promise and in 2006 the company went global. Today a whole range of Bundaberg drinks are found in 32 countries and the Flemings' son – and former chairman of 20 years – Cliff remains involved with the company, which is now reportedly worth $1 billion.

Founded by married couple Gordon and Rena Merchant in the surf epicentre of the Gold Coast in 1973, Billabong is a brand synonymous with Aussie beach life. At first, the Merchants designed and created board shorts from their home for local surf shops. But the clothes’ unique triple-stitching technique meant they were more durable than any other shorts on the market and the company expanded. 

By the 1980s, Billabong was available in every Aussie city, even those which are landlocked. Within a decade, the brand had sailed out of the country and was making waves in the global market. However sales started to plummet and, after a few different buyouts, the company was bought by rival Quiksilver in early January 2018 in a $198 million deal. The former rival is hoping to revive the venerable beach brand.

Quiksilver was born in 1973 when Alan Green and John Law decided to start a business that also allowed them spend time surfing in Torquay in Victoria. In a similar trajectory to Billabong, the quality of their board shorts meant that business boomed and Quiksilver became a $1 billion brand in 2004.

In 2017, Quiksilver announced that it had changed its corporate name to Boardriders, but it remains the largest surf brand in the world. Its main offices are now in California’s Huntington Beach. Quiksilver's sister company Roxy has also been a huge success, growing to be one of the biggest women's sport and lifestyle retailers in the world.

Founded in 1982 by travel businessmen Graham Turner, Bill James and Geoff Harris, Flight Centre was an instant hit with Australians from its base in Brisbane. It’s still the country's largest retail travel outlet and the trio were worth a combined $19 billion, according to Financial Review's 2018 Rich List.

It took a little less than a decade for the company to spread its wings to reach an international audience, and today there are 2,800 Flight Centre shops in 80 countries around the world. The business is now valued at $4.32 billion.

QBE Insurance is one of the oldest companies in our line-up, founded all the way back in 1886 in Townsville by two young Scotsmen, James Burns and Robert Philp. In just 14 years the insurance company had gone global, providing cover for people in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Today QBE Insurance ranks in the top 20 best insurance companies in the world and has over 12,000 employees in more than 30 countries. The company is currently valued at a cool $16.7 billion and it has hit the news most recently for its generous contributions to bushfire relief and recovery efforts across Australia.

Having served in World War I, Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness wanted to connect Australia to the rest of the world, and so they created Qantas. The first flights provided connections for people living in western Queensland and by 1935 the airline had services between Brisbane and Singapore, taking a now not-so-speedy three and a half days. Fast forward 45 years and Qantas was flying from Perth to London, as well as having established the world's first business class cabin.

Qantas achieved another world first this year to kick off its centenary celebrations, which was the first direct flight from London to Sydney.  The flight took 19 hours and 19 minutes and was the first of several celebrations in the run-up to the company's 100th birthday. Qantas is currently valued at $10.6 billion and is regularly named as the best airline in the Pacific region.

BHP is world-leading resources company that extracts and processes minerals, oil and gas to be distributed worldwide. With headquarters in Melbourne, today's BHP began as a merger between Broken Hill Proprietary and Billiton, two small mining companies founded in the mid-1800s. Iron ore, diamonds, silver and zinc were among the natural resources being sourced by BHP.

The now Anglo-Australian BHP Group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, is currently valued at £94.3 billion ($178.7bn), but its success isn't without controversy. The fossil fuel giant has been named in a list of 20 companies that between them have contributed to more than one third of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1965 by the Climate Accountability Institute.

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