By Stuart Corner of IoT Australia The Victorian Government has called for expressions of interest for its planned on-farm trials of IoT, part of its $45 million Connecting Victoria initiative to improve digital technology and infrastructure across regional Victoria. In the first round of the trials grants of up to $30,000 will be available to…
Pharmaceutical company Probiotic (ASX: PBP) has increased its manufacturing footprint with the purchase of Sydney packaging company ABS, formally Australian Blister Sealing. Probiotic paid $23 million for the 40-year-old Seven Hills company which provides contract packaging services for the pharmaceutical and food sectors, including bottle filling, labeling and blister packaging. Probiotic managing director, Wes Stringer…
Bombardier Transportation’s Dandenong, Victoria factory will produce another 12 train sets for Adelaide’s ongoing rail network electrification project. The company, which provided 22 A-City train sets for the city’s first electrified suburban line to Seaford, has won a contract variation to add another 12 of the three-car sets from the state government. The A-City trains…
Australian and Indian researchers have developed a method to dramatically shrink the cost of making graphene by using eucalyptus trees as raw material. Researchers from RMIT University and India’s National Institute of Technology, Waranga have succeeded in making grahene from bark. RMIT’s Professor Suresh Bhargava said: “Eucalyptus bark extract has never been used to synthesise…
By Stuart Corner of IoT Australia The ETSI SmartM2M technical committee has released three new specifications for: smart cities; industry and manufacturing; smart agriculture and food chain domains saying they will enable interoperability and therefore contribute to the development of the global digital market. They are the latest in a series of Smart Applications Reference…
Industrial geotextile producer Geofabrics has extended the use of its Australian made textiles to a problem that beat Norway’s King Canute – protecting beaches from wave erosion. The company has been making waves – or reducing them – with the use of its giant Elcorock bags filled with sand as breakwaters, groynes and sea walls…
Phoslock Environmental Technologies (ASX: PET) this week demonstrated the potential of a new route for local innovation – go from Australian idea to successful product entirely within the China market. As China’s economy grows this route will become increasingly common for manufacturers, especially as Phoslock’s shares have leapt 25 per cent this week on news…
Labor’s suggestion at the recent election that Australia should own merchant ships has sparked discussion among experts about what other areas of critical infrastructure should be brought within Australia’s control. While the opposition’s idea that Australia needed domestically-owned ships that could be requisitioned during times of emergency failed to move the electorate, some think the…
Based in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Zone RV designs and manufactures custom-built recreational vehicles, but it wasn’t until it radically changed its ideas that success came. Zone RV head of design and engineering Brad Marshall explains that the founders boat-building background led them to disrupt the sector with vehicles from carbon fibre, fibreglass and other composites.…
Australia’s defence ministers have confirmed construction is on schedule at the Osborne Naval Precinct in Adelaide for a 2020 completion of the government’s major shipbuilding infrastructure investments. Canberra is spending $535 million at Osborne preparing the site, which built the Collins Class submarines, to construct Australia’s new Hunter class frigates. Defence minister Linda Reynolds and…
