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

What were the five biggest stories of the week? Here’s what visitors to this site were reading.

5) Infrabuild to the rescue as loan bolsters GFG Alliance

UK billionaire Sanjeev Gupta has again relied on his successful Australian steel businesses to bolster his GFG Alliance group’s finances, with steel manufacturer and distributor Infrabuild confirming a new secured loan.

InfraBuild closed a $537 million (USD350 million) Senior Secured Asset-Backed Term Loan led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and Silver Point Finance.

Infrabuild operates recycling operations feeding two electric arc steel furnaces and eight product manufacturing mills in Australia as well as a manufacturing facility in Dalian, China.

4) REDARC and Fleet Space push frontiers of mining technology

Electronics manufacturer REDARC is teaming up with nanosatellite systems manufacturer Fleet Space Technologies to push the frontiers of mining technology utilising satellite sensing.

REDARC will manufacture Fleet Space’s high technology satellite-connected mining exploration products at its Lonsdale, Adelaide facility.

The products will be used with Fleet Space’s ExoSphere, a satellite solution for the mineral exploration industry that provides fast 3D mapping of minerals and drilling targets in near real time.

3) Nominations flood in for Australia’s 50 most innovative manufacturers campaign

As readers of this website will know, nominations closed on Friday May 26 for @AuManufacturing’s very first Australia’s 50 most innovative manufacturers campaign.

How was the response, you ask? Let us say that we are stunned. Shocked. Unable to stop smiling.

Being the first time we have run this campaign, we were of course unsure of what to expect. We’ll confess to being even a little nervous about responses matching up to what we hoped to deliver.

2) Maria Skyllas-Kazacos – an innovator we should all know better

Emeritus Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos (pictured) is a name few know, but we all should, as she is one of the most brilliant and somehow unappreciated innovators this country has ever produced, wrote Peter Roberts.

Ms Skyllas-Kazacos’s name re-emerged this morning with an announcement that she had joined a Technical Advisory Group of critical mineral processing company Tivan.

1) Forget exporting hydrogen, make green iron and steel – Sanjeev Gupta

The Executive Chairman of steelmaker GFG Alliance Sanjeev Gupta has urged Australia to forgo the export of green hydrogen in favour of making green iron and steel onshore.

The owner of the Whyalla steelworks and distributor Infrabuild told the Australian Hydrogen Conference in Brisbane that Australia had a generational opportunity to lead the global race to produce high value green iron and steel from hydrogen.

Gupta said: “The real cost of hydrogen stems from its stubborn desire to stay put – you can’t move it…not really.
“Shipping a product made from hydrogen is much easier than shipping hydrogen.”

Picture: credit REDARC