Manufacturing news briefs - stories you might have missed

The Department of Defence said is recognising its significant role in contributing to the nation’s emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050 ahead of World Environment Day. In a statement this week, it mentioned initiatives including heat pump upgrades to increase living-in-accommodation hot water supplies while minimising costs and carbon emissions, energy resilience for northern bases with the Defence estate’s largest combined solar farm at NT’s RAAF Base Darwin and Robertson Barracks, and LED upgrades across the Defence estate reducing lighting power use by 90 per cent. Camouflage uniforms had also been recycled into raw textiles for furnishings, construction industries and use as biofuel.

Perfection Fresh has partnered with packaging business Detpak to launch a new strawberry punnet (pictured) to be rolled out in Coles stores from next month. In a statement on Wednesday, Detpak — a subsidiary of Adelaide-based Detmold Group — said the new 240-gram punnet features ventilation holes to maximise freshness, and showcased premium strawberries “in a format that’s both practical and visually striking”. The punnets were designed by Detpak’s R&D team at its LaunchPad facility, and “blend form with function by reducing plastic by 87 per cent, while also featuring a unique locking mechanism to keep fruit secure.” Perfection Fresh is a major supplier of fresh produce to the nation’s retail sector. Detpak Business Manager Christian Bell said the new strawberry packaging would be a leader in the transition from plastics to fibre-based packaging in Australia’s fresh produce industry. “As our LaunchPad capabilities grow, we’ve also been able to create and further develop fibre-based solutions which outperform the plastic alternative when it comes to shelf life performance,” said Bell.

A new AI system for automatically identifying contaminated construction and demolition wood waste has been developed by researchers from Monash University and Charles Darwin University (CDU). The team’s results were published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling, and according to Monash present “the first real-world image dataset of contaminated wood waste – a major step toward smarter recycling and sustainable construction.” The team was led by Madini De Alwis with Dr Milad Bazli (CDU), under the supervision of Associate Professor Mehrdad Arashpour, Head of Construction Engineering at Monash. It trained and tested cutting-edge deep learning models to detect contamination types in wood waste using images. Contaminated wood from construction and demolition sites often ends up in landfill due to the difficulty of sorting it manually. De Alwis, a PhD candidate at Monash, said: “This new system could be deployed via camera-enabled sorting lines, drones or handheld tools to support on-site decision-making.”

This week Monash University also announced that it will invest $60 million to build and operate an advanced AI supercomputer, named Monash AdVanced Environment for Research and Intelligent Computing (MAVERIC). According to a statement, the upcoming machine “will place the University as a leader in AI-driven research within the international higher education and research sector” and “will enable researchers based in Australia’s higher education sector to perform large computational projects that currently lie beyond their reach”. It said such AI-accelerated supercomputers “are disrupting and driving transformative outcomes across a wide range of academic and commercial research, including in health and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, climate science and engineering.” MAVERIC will initially be applied to global health challenges, including projects focussed on the early detection of cancer and improving scientists’ ability to efficiently and cost-effectively identify new medicines.

Life sciences industry group AusBiotech and the federal government’s Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) are partnering to deliver a new National TradeStart Adviser role, which the pair say will support Australian companies to scale and grow internationally. The adviser role will be embedded within AusBiotech’s team and work directly with life sciences companies across Australia to connect them with Austrade and its services. AusBiotech CEO Rebekah Cassidy said: “Australia’s life sciences companies are innovating at pace, but navigating global markets can be complex. This new role will help to unlock growth and global pathways by embedding a new and sophisticated level of strategic support directly into our ecosystem.”

Employer representative the Australian Industry Group has said that GDP growth unchanged at 1.3 per cent p.a. in the March quarter puts the focus back on the need for immediate policy reforms “to get investment and productivity moving again”. In a statement following figures release on Wednesday, the Ai Group’s Chief Executive Innes Willox said: “The government stimulus that accounted for the majority of growth in 2024 has now tapered off. Without a material uplift in private sector investment and productivity to compensate, this has left the economy listing.” The figures were “materially below expectations and official forecasts” for a recovery towards 1.5 per cent, according to the Ai Group. “Governments can no longer hope a private sector recovery will simply materialise on its own. Getting productivity and investment moving – and doing so right now – must be at the forefront of minds in Canberra and around our state capitals,” said Willox.