Set up your operations in Australia and New Zealand

What does a market-entry engagement with Corpshore actually cover?

Corpshore supports foreign companies establishing a presence in Australia or New Zealand with staffing and delivery capability: people who can start doing the work, from an initial small team through to a scaled operation, while the company's own legal, tax and immigration advisers handle the parts of market entry that only a qualified adviser should handle, incorporation, tax registration, visa and immigration matters, and formal compliance sign-off. This split is deliberate. Corpshore is not a law firm, an accounting practice or an immigration agency, and this page is general information, not legal or tax advice. What Corpshore brings is the operational capability to have people working on the ground, or working remotely into the market, while the company's own advisers handle the legal and regulatory scaffolding around that.

What does a typical market-entry engagement look like in practice?

Most engagements start with a small onshore or blended team covering an initial function, commonly customer support or back office administration, standing up while the company's own advisers are still working through incorporation and tax registration in parallel. This means a foreign company does not have to wait for every piece of paperwork to clear before it has people doing real work in or for the Australian or New Zealand market. Team size then scales as the business establishes itself and its own local presence firms up, rather than the company committing to a large fixed team on day one before it knows how the market entry will actually go.

Can we start working before our company is locally incorporated?

Yes. A staffing and delivery engagement can begin ahead of, or in parallel with, incorporation, with the company's own advisers handling the legal and tax registration steps on their own timeline. This is one of the more practical benefits of separating the staffing and delivery question from the legal entity question: a company does not need to have finished incorporating before it has a working team, though it should still be talking to its own legal and tax advisers from the start, since some structuring decisions are easier to get right early than to unwind later.

What employment law applies to a new market entrant's onshore team?

Australian employment sits under the Fair Work Act's National Employment Standards, the baseline entitlements every national system employee is covered by, plus a Modern Award rate for most roles that sets pay above the bare minimum. New Zealand employment currently sits under the Holidays Act 2003, covering annual leave, public holidays and related entitlements, and this framework is being replaced by the Employment Leave Act from August 2028. Getting these basics right from day one matters more for a new market entrant than for an established local employer, because a new entrant has no existing local HR function or track record to fall back on if something is set up incorrectly. This is exactly why Corpshore always positions its role as work alongside the company's own advisers rather than a substitute for them: employment law compliance, like incorporation and tax, is not something Corpshore signs off on in the company's place.

How is compliance and data handling addressed for a new market entrant?

Where the new operation involves personal information about Australian or New Zealand customers or staff, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, or the equivalent New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 framework, apply from the moment that data starts being collected, regardless of how new or established the local entity is. Corpshore's own compliance and security practices, detailed on the compliance and security page, are built to support a client's obligations here, but the company's own legal adviser should confirm how these frameworks interact with its specific corporate structure and data flows as part of the broader market-entry advice it is already getting.

What is the difference between this page and the Australian provider for global companies page?

This page is for companies establishing their own presence in Australia or New Zealand, working toward their own local entity and operations over time. The Australian provider for global companies page is for companies that want Australia-facing delivery coverage without opening a local entity themselves, either because that is not the goal at all, or because it is a later-stage decision they are not ready to make yet. The two paths are not mutually exclusive: a company can start on one and move to the other as its plans firm up, and Corpshore's staffing and delivery capability supports either direction.

What functions do companies typically start with during market entry?

Customer support and back office administration are the most common starting functions, since they let a new market entrant begin serving customers or processing transactions quickly without needing a large, specialised local team from day one. As the business grows, this often expands into more specialised functions, technical support, finance and accounting, or IT and AI-assisted work, coordinated under the same account team rather than added as disconnected new vendor relationships.

How does a market-entry engagement start?

The starting point is a conversation about the company's specific market-entry plan and timeline, including where its own legal, tax and immigration advisers are up to, so Corpshore's staffing and delivery scope is built around the real sequence of events rather than a generic template. A discovery call is the fastest way to have that conversation, and a transparent, AUD-denominated cost estimate is available through pricing once the initial scope is confirmed.