Elizabeth Lewis-Gray is the co-founder, chair and managing director of Gekko Systems. She is the founding chair of the Federal Government's Mining Equipment, Technology and Services (METS) Growth Centre, METS Ignited and a founder and patron of the Coalition for Energy Efficient Comminution (CEEC). She has also served on a number of boards
In August 2023, Elizabeth was inducted into the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame for Service to Industry. She spoke with Sonya Murphy for AMT.
AMT: What were your initial thoughts when you received the Honour Roll at the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame Awards this year in Melbourne?
Elizabeth Lewis-Gray: I was expecting to have been nominated for a regional manufacturing award, or the women in manufacturing award. As the night went on, those awards came up and I wasn’t nominated for them. Then I thought maybe it was the medium manufacturer’s award, but soon realised I hadn’t been nominated for that either. I looked at the program and came to the realisation that I was up for the top gong for the night. It was an exciting, and very special night shared with my husband, daughters, and our team.
I’m passionate about manufacturing and an advocate for regional manufacturing. I’m proud that we have a world-class technology and manufacturing team in the regional city of Ballarat.
Australia is considered world’s best in the mining and mining technology industries. Both industries are grouped together, yet the mining technology and services (METS) sector sits alongside mining and is one of our largest sophisticated technology and digital industries worth $120bn in Australia. Fifty-five per cent of companies in the METS sector are exporters. To export, you have to be world-class, and competitive on a global scale.
At Gekko Systems, we succeed because we are innovative, both in our product design, and the way we market and sell ourselves globally.
AMT: Are you working with companies in the critical minerals industry?
ELG: We are working with several companies in the critical minerals industry, for example, a company that produces both tantalite and lithium. Both are both critical and strategic minerals. Strategic minerals are required in the production of renewable energy and critical minerals are minerals that are in short supply. As you know Australia’s mining industry has been focused on coal, iron ore, and gold. Critical and strategic minerals are the new growth sectors.
We have technology which separates out minerals based on their density. Our equipment is very low energy using gravity separation, which is the cleanest, lowest carbon, lowest environmental footprint technology that you can get. We are doing a lot of work with a bunch of different people who are looking to develop their critical and strategic resources.
AMT: How crucial is sustainability in mining?
ELG: It is heartening to see the lengths that the majority of critical mineral mining projects have gone to invest in green stewardship of a lot of sites.
Investors in the critical and strategic minerals are insisting that mining companies have strong sustainability practices and a clear pathway to reducing their carbon footprint. In some cases, investors will take their money out of mining companies that can’t show a clear pathway to sustainable practices.
AMT: Please tell me about the GeVentor ventilator
ELG: In any business, you have to stay ahead of the game, especially on a global level. Through one of our products, we produce 10% of the world’s gold. It’s that capability that allowed us to design and develop a ventilator when COVID came along.
The local Ballarat base hospital only had four ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic, and they knew if COVID happened the way it looked like it was going to, the hospital would be in trouble.
The question was asked of the Committee of Ballarat, “What can we do and who can we talk to in Ballarat who can help us”. The Committee called me on a Sunday night to ask if we could help. I spoke to my husband. He said, what we do in our mining products is pneumatics, hydraulics and control systems, and ventilators are the same – pneumatics, hydraulics, and control systems, just on a tiny scale. Within five days, he had designed a prototype.
From there, our design team and the anaesthetists from the Ballarat base hospital started working together every night.
My job was to talk to the State Government and raise the money to move the prototype forward. In the space of 24 hours a group of doctors, the Bendigo Bank and others from the local community got together and raised $240,000.
I went back to the State Government and said that although we are not medical device manufacturers, we have the capability to manufacture ventilators. I expected the State Government to run with an existing medical device manufacturer. I said if they would match the $240,000 raised by the community, we’d have enough money to take the product through to final design.
The Government assessed all their options and ended up putting in $200,000. We completed the design and were the first company in Australia to get a ventilator design through the TGA in three months, which is incredible. The State Government then gave us an order to manufacture. We had to comply to the 13485 ISO manufacturing standard for medical device technology.
Manufacturing isn’t just about what happens on the factory floor. It’s about design, engineering, sales and marketing. How you deliver value to the client right across the manufacturing process. My role was to oversee the process and make sure it was funded. To ensure we had the right people and could access the resources we needed.
AMT: You have a new spin-out from Gekko, Gaia EnviroTech. Could you explain some more about that?
ELG: We were looking around for another industry where we could take our modular systems thinking, our material handling competencies, as well as our other competencies, and apply it to another industry based in Australia. As a business, we are very focused on energy efficiency. It’s been one of our organisational drivers in mineral processing and this was also about improved energy platforms.
A lot of focus has gone into electrifying everything, but we need to find a solution for industries that can’t electrify because electricity doesn’t provide high enough heat for their processes. Yet they still need to de-carbonise. Think of brickworks and food manufacturers, they need to use natural gas, or alternatively biogas. The bio-energy industry is big in Europe, they’ve been doing it for years. In fact, 30% of energy in Finland comes from bioenergy.
Our inspiration was a local pig farmer who has been running an anaerobic digestion waste energy biogas plant for 30 years. We worked with him to come up with the concept of a modular anaerobic digestion plant.
It’s a growth market that helps the planet by reducing methane production and replacing fossil fuels. The green matter to run the bioenergy comes from food and agricultural waste. There are different types of bioenergy, by example, we’re looking at the waste from milk processors. There are bugs in the biodigester that break down the milk, which then produces methane, and the methane is burnt to produce gas. It’s super exciting. I believe this is a significant opportunity and pathway for Victoria. Bioenergy and biogas aren’t an easy sell. There are a few moving parts in the system compared to solar and wind power.
In my mind, this is a really important step for the manufacturing industry in Australia. We’re talking to different groups on how we can deliver organic feedstock to produce bioenergy. It’s very exciting. We’ve been working on it for six years to get the technologies to where they are now. We’ve just raised capital to help us do that with a decarbonisation investment fund.
AMT: Can you talk about the Dolphin Mine Processing Plant on King Island, with G6M recovering tungsten?
ELG: Tungsten hardens steel and is used a lot in wear parts and areas like defence. China produces 80% of the tungsten in the world. We need to think about if China stopped supply what don’t we have access to. We’ve just done a $60m project on King Island with Group Six Metals. It’s the only Tungsten mine in Australia. It’s used in steel-making, electronics, and many other manufacturing industries.
AMT: With so much going on in your business life, what do you do to relax?
ELG: Being in nature is how I relax. I enjoy going for hikes in the local state forests.