Best of the week — the five most popular stories among @AuManufacturing’s readers

For the last time in 2022, we recap the five biggest stories of the week. Here’s what visitors to this site were reading.

PROPERTY DEVELOPER BACKS WHYALLA GREEN HYDROGEN AND GREENSTEEL PROJECTS

One of Australia’s most respected property developers has put a bold plan to the South Australian government to revive the steel city of Whyalla by building hotels and thousands of new homes to house a massive influx of residents needed to support planned green hydrogen and green steel manufacturing facilities, writes Peter Roberts.

With the South Australian government investing $600 million in the city to construct an electrolyser that will power a green hydrogen power station, major companies vying for the right to build renewable hydrogen-based manufacturing and export facilities and Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance preparing to manufacture Greensteel, Whyalla, seems set for a massive boom.

FREE TAFE PLACES ANNOUNCED FOR VICTORIA

The federal and Victorian Governments have inked a 12-month Skills Agreement which will inject more than $250 million into the Victorian skills and training sector to support access to more than 55,000 Fee-Free TAFE and vocational education and training (VET) places in 2023.

The agreement also includes an Australian Government commitment of $4.2 million to immediately improve TAFE facilities in Victoria, and $0.93 million for essential VET data infrastructure reform.

Training through Fee-Free TAFE will help drive enrolments in sectors with recognised skills shortages by matching training identified through the skills priority list, according to an announcement.

SIX COMMERCIALISATION GRANTS, NEW PLANT PROTEIN FACILITY OPENED

Industry minister Ed Husic has announced co-investment into a further six projects under the final tranche of the Commercialisation Fund.

The six from Queensland, Victoria and South Australia will share $2,120,496 in federal funding to bring their innovations to market and generate commercial outcomes.

When paired with industry contributions and in-kind funding the final tranche of the Commercialisation Fund will inject $9.18 million into the manufacturing industry.

THE PARLOUS STATE OF AUSTRALIA’S FOOD INDUSTRY

We all need to eat, but we seem to take for granted our access to processed and fresh food and groceries, and even more so to Australia’s parlous food industry value chain, writes Allen Roberts.

To consider the ‘food industry’ as one entity ignores the entirely different strategic drivers of the three main components: raw material production or ‘farming’, manufacturing, and retail.

In addition to food products in the FMCG basket, you have many non-food grocery items from cleaning and homewares to health, beauty, and personal and pet care categories. Go into any supermarket, and these non-food categories take up somewhere around 20 percent of shelf space.

RESEARCHERS SEE 14-FOLD IMPROVEMENT IN HYDROGEN PRODUCTION BY ADDING SOUNDWAVES TO ELECTROLYSIS

An RMIT University team that has developed a new technique using sound waves to greatly boost the output of hydrogen from electrolysers is currently seeking industry partners to scale up the invention.

According to a statement from the university on Tuesday, the researchers had achieved a 14-fold improvement in hydrogen production through electrolysis.

The sound waves in combination with electric water splitting were described as being able to better “divide and conquer” individual hydrogen molecules to turn them into hydrogen and oxygen.

Picture: Foreshore development area (credit Thrive Construct)