Member News

Minister for Education, The Hon Jason Clare has announced that the Australian Research Centre will fund the establishment of the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Composites for the Future of Sustainable Mining Equipment at the University of Wollongong (UOW). UOW Vice-Chancellor Professor Patricia Davidson said the Illawarra is the perfect setting for a centre focusing on sustainable mining. “Wollongong has deeply held roots in mining and manufacturing, and this training centre will be the perfect launch pad for global collaboration and innovation,” Professor Davidson said. “Our state-of-the-art engineering and technology hubs will offer the perfect environment to train the future minds of mining and to find solutions to revolutionise an industry that contributes 15% of Australian GDP.” In Australia the Mining Equipment, Technology and Service (METS) sector is estimated to add more than $50bn and 80,000 new jobs to the Australian economy by 2030. The transformation of the sector towards more efficient, cost-effective, innovative, sustainable and digital operations will require safer machinery and equipment, which is able to operate in deeper mines and harsh…

Successful Endeavours has won the Australian Industrial Product of the Year 2022 at the Manufacturers Monthly Endeavour Awards. And they were also a category finalist for the Best Industrial IoT Application. “I’m very pleased for this recognition for our team and for this product, which is designed in Australia and made in Australia,” said Ray Keefe, Founder and Director at Successful Endeavours. “The Plumb Guard MkIV Bluetooth is a good example of the types of projects we undertake.”  Ray Keefe has developed market-leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. The Endeavour Awards have been at the pinnacle of Australian Manufacturing awards for the past 10 years. Ray Keefe was surprised and elated to win the Australian Industrial Product of the Year for 2022. “We have a great team and I am pleased they are able to be recognised at the industry level for their contribution to Australian manufacturing,” he said. The Plumb Guard MkIV Bluetooth product is a modern industrial IoT-enabled safety device that helps keep plumbers alive by warning them, and their on-site supervisors, that they are in…

Capral introduces LocAl®, a lower-carbon primary aluminium option available across Capral's locally manufactured extruded aluminium products. Providing Australian manufacturers access to cleaner, greener, more sustainable aluminium for their projects. The LocAl offer includes two lower carbon aluminium options: LocAl Green with carbon emissions of 8kg CO2e/kg Al* and LocAl Super Green at 4kg CO2e/kg Al* - amongst the lowest carbon aluminium available globally. In 2022, Capral committed to reaching Net Zero emissions by 2050, a significant step change, driving rapid innovation and cultural evolution throughout the business, most notably within procurement and operations. The introduction of LocAl demonstrates a deliberate shift in Capral's procurement strategy for primary aluminium billet. Luke Hawkins, General Manager of Supply & Industrial Solutions, said this is a strategic change for Capral, “driven by our desire to make lower Carbon aluminium accessible to Australian manufacturers. The market is looking for this product, and as Australia's largest extruder of aluminium, we must make it available. In 2022, 22% of the primary aluminium billet Capral uses in its eight local extrusion presses had a carbon content lower than eight kilograms CO2e per kilogram…

Facteon has spent the past four decades crafting factory automation and proprietary welding solutions and has grown to become an international specialist in factory solutions, smart manufacturing, and IIoT technologies. The company’s welding solutions focus on developing technologies that deliver weld strength, alignment, and a superior cosmetic finish, as Warren Collenette, Senior Design Engineer from Facteon explains. “We are focused on customer confidence; we want our customers to be confident in each and every solution that we supply.” Facteon provides robust welding solutions to some of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers and their welding technology can be used to process aluminum, mild steel, and multiple grades of stainless steel. “Irrespective of the industry, consistency, and repeatability are key,” Collenette says. Naturally, finding the right automation partner is central to the success of any manufacturer and Collenette says that Facteon looks to SMC Corporation Australia New Zealand for many of its unique automation requirements. “We started working with SMC more than 25 years. The initial relationship was between Fisher and Paykel, who at the time owned Facteon, and SMC,” he says. “We have a great…

Leading materials handling manufacturer Enmin is manufacturing electromagnetic drives in Australia. These drives offer a unique handling method for controlling the flow of food products, ingredients, and bulk material. Products can be screened, sized, or accurately metered to ensure a smooth, uniform, and fully variable flow. With minimal moving parts, next to no ongoing maintenance, and low energy consumption it’s a reliable, low-cost method of product handling. The drives are designed and constructed to meet the rigorous requirements of the food and pharmaceutical industries such as maximum hygiene, ease of cleaning, and continuous 24/7 operation. The cyclic operation is controlled by a range of electronic controllers that will vary the feeding rate in a manner to suit the specific application enabling high-speed filling coupled with pinpoint accuracy. The controllers are available in different enclosures or as standalone for incorporation into central panels. As production lines evolve and other components are updated to achieve higher throughput, older and less efficient drives cannot match the required capacity increase. “Fitting one of our new generation drives will ensure that a higher conveying speed can be achieved to…

Australian manufacturers will now gain access to a ground-breaking new composite 3D printer at the Swinburne University of Technology, from global market leader Markforged. The Markforged FX20 printer is primarily designed for high-strength end-use parts in the aerospace, defense, automotive and energy industries. The FX20 prints nearly five times larger builds and is up to eight times faster than Markforged's existing line of composite printers. The FX20 printer at Swinburne’s Aerostructures Innovation Research Hub (AIR Hub) will be the first and only FX20 printer openly accessible to industry in Australia for use in research and development, helping promote new aerospace development and support the continued growth of the sector locally. It also features a heated build chamber capable of maintaining a temperature of up to 200°C to print flame-retardant, high-performance thermoplastic material. Shai Terem, President and CEO of Markforged, hosted the Australian launch of the FX20 3D printer at Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus as part of a three-city launch tour in Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. “With this combination of hardware and software, users can create end-use, mission-critical parts and build resilient and sustainable supply chains that extend directly…

Markforged, creator of the integrated metal and carbon fiber additive manufacturing platform, The Digital Forge, is pleased to announce the local Australian launch of its newest printer, the FX20. “We are very excited to bring Markforged’s FX20 to Australia to strengthen local sovereign manufacturing capabilities and support reshoring initiatives,” said Richard Elving, Senior Director Australia, Markforged. “Given our remoteness in Australia, supply chain issues can be costly and time-sensitive, and with the FX20 we see this as an enabler of printing parts that will provide a competitive advantage to manufacturers by being able to react quickly to solve problems right on the manufacturing floor. The FX20 will meet the needs of even the most demanding local industries, such as defence, F&B, and mining.” “The FX20 is a beast of a machine and represents our commitment to providing innovative solutions to our customers to empower them to build anything they can imagine. The addition of the FX20 to the Digital Forge strengthens our leading position in the additive manufacturing market by enabling the robust production of lightweight, advanced composite parts. With this combination of hardware and software, our…

Vehicles used in mining and remote area transport are subjected to some of the harshest conditions and usage imaginable. They need to be built extra tough, have improved ground clearance, improved gross vehicle mass (GVM), and be super reliable to meet the extraordinary off-road demands of remote and difficult terrain travel. Based in Carrum Downs Victoria, EnduroCo provides 4x4 conversions for the Toyota Hiace and Toyota Coaster buses and vans. These vehicles offer the perfect 4x4 minibus or van transport solution for mining sites with the ability to traverse all harsh and difficult-to-navigate terrain in absolute safety and confidence. From the outback to sand and beach environments, whether it be for passenger transport, tourism, off-road ambulance, disaster recovery, search and rescue or even law enforcement vehicles, the EnduroCo 4x4 conversions provide the build quality, reliability, comfort and affordability which has been tried, tested and manufactured to withstand the harshest Australian conditions. EnduroCo’s impressive customer list includes mining operators such as BHP, BMA, Golding, Harmony Gold PNG, Glencore and Thiess. All the components for the EnduroCo 4x4 conversions have been designed locally by EnduroCo…

The full Oxford Economics report has so much detail in it, I found it hard to know where to start in giving you some information that may be of interest. So what I have done is focus on areas that may give some context to the overall report and highlight some high level activity that is apparently on the global stage. The most recent survey data points to weaker manufacturing activity in the quarter from July-September 2022. The lower right quadrant of the Global Supply Chain Barometer shows a manufacturing sector still expanding, but in most cases surveys have weakened significantly over the last three months. The lower left corner is consistent both with shrinking manufacturing output and worsening over the last three months. Of the major economies shown in this graph, only India and Indonesia are still seeing an expansion which appears to be strengthening. Interestingly, the Australian PMI dropped 3.2 points to 49.3 points in August 2022, indicating a…

A specialist supplier of steel tube and pipe, Austube Mills, part of the InfraBuild Group, is benefitting from a low-maintenance, time-saving, and safe hydraulic clamping solution for its steel slitters at its Acacia Ridge plant in Queensland. Austube Mills Acacia Ridge, which has been manufacturing and producing steel solutions since 1984, installed Technofast EziTite clamp nuts, which provide reliable and precisely repeatable force, on its steel slitters to allow the rotating slitter blades to cut through kilometres of black steel. Once the steel is cut to width, it is shaped into rectangular, square or round tubes on tube rolling mills, which are subsequently used in a huge range of applications in industries such as construction, manufacturing, mining, transport, and agriculture. “The Technofast solution is not just more reliable – it’s safer, too,” says Austube Mills Manufacturing Superintendent, Michael Thomasson, who has been working with the company for more than 30 years, starting as a fitter, and holding roles such as maintenance planner, maintenance superintendent and manufacturing superintendent. He has a Mechanical Engineering Diploma and Graduate Diploma in Maintenance Management. “I remember the…

Spare Parts 3D (SP3D), with offices in Paris (HQ) and Singapore, has been helping companies adopt Additive Manufacturing (AM) in their supply chains as part of the solutions to address spare parts problems:  spare parts obsolescence, long lead time, high cost of inventory, MOQ etc. AM adoption brings up multiple obstacles that can be overwhelming: incomplete part data (lack of dimensions, materials, drawings), lack of in-house AM knowledge, picking which part to print, estimating how much savings can be achieved, dealing with limited manpower, etc. Spare Parts 3D has developed DigiPART, a powerful AI-based software solution to facilitate the creation of Digital Inventory and enable the adoption of AM in industries. DigiPART identifies the parts that are technically 3D printable and those that make business sense, thus getting tangible results faster and creating value for your company and supply chain. It sifts through very large inventories, does not require drawings, and has been designed to operate with partial data set. Results are fully transparent and traceable. In last two years,…

For more than two decades, National Group has supplied heavy-earthmoving equipment and end-to-end mining services to the world’s largest resource companies. Their machinery is used at flagship Australian mines to dig up iron ore, coal, gold, nickel and other commodities. Led by founder Mark Ackroyd, National Group owns one of this country’s largest and most advanced fleets of mining equipment. “National Group continues to grow and diversify its NSW operations,” says Ackroyd. “We have significant long-term contracts in coal and gold, and a strong pipeline of opportunities for sustained growth in NSW. National Group has created well over 100 regional jobs in NSW in the past two years. We intend to create plenty more.” By his own account, Mark Ackroyd was born and bred into this industry. He learned all about the machinery by working on roadworks at a very, very young age. “Like eight to 10 years old, I was going to work,” he says. Ackroyd was clearly not scared of a risk, or playing the long game. He worked his way up from owning one bulldozer, into…

Queensland’s new Energy and Jobs Plan represents a great leap forward in delivering clean energy, thousands of jobs, and multimillion-dollar economic opportunities for the Sunshine State, the Climate Council says. “Queensland has substantially raised its renewable energy target to 70% by 2032, with a $62bn investment in regional communities, good jobs, and clean power for all Queenslanders. This is a big step forward for the Sunshine State,” Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council said. “With its Energy Plan, Queensland has set itself up to cash in on the global transition away from polluting coal and gas, while bringing coal workers and regional communities along on the inevitable journey. It’s great to see that 95% of the $62bn spent on this plan will be invested in the regions. “This now puts Queensland ahead of the big states for their 2030 renewable energy targets. Queensland is now aiming for 60% by 2030, compared to Victoria which has pledged 50% by 2030, and New South Wales with no specific target. Queenslanders have already suffered enormously from climate change-fueled floods and fires.  In fact, during the announcement, Queensland Premier Annastacia…