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What were the biggest stories of 2024?

Manufacturing News




What were the five biggest stories of last year? Here’s what visitors to @AuManufacturing were reading.

5) Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers for 2024 announced (April 18)

@AuManufacturing’s Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers for 2024 were announced to a full room at Cockle Bay Wharf’s rooftop L’Aqua venue.

After a five-month campaign and the assessments of five expert judges, the list for the year can be made public.

4) Troubled Whyalla steelworks to restart within a week – Koutsantonis (December 5)

The South Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, and Minister for Energy and Mining Tom Koutsantonis held an ‘urgent meeting’ with operators of the troubled Whyalla steelworks, emerging confident that the blast furnace would be up and running within a week.

However Koutsantonis had ‘grave concerns’ about unpaid bills, according to media reports, with local supplier businesses complaining about lack of work and arrears on bills by the works, owned by Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance.

The company was ‘moving heaven and earth’ to get the blast furnace restarted, the minister said.

3) Tritium’s rapid rise and collapse is over – goes into administration (April 19)

The once high flying electric vehicle charger manufacturer Tritium DCFC has succumbed to a litany of financial problems, with the appointment of voluntary administrators to its three Australian subsidiaries Tritium Pty Ltd, Tritium Holdings and Tritium Nominee, wrote Peter Roberts.

According to a brief statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission – parent company Tritium DCFC is listed on the US NASDAQ – the boards of the parent and subsidiary companies determined that they were insolvent or likely to be insolvent. There has been no announcement to the NASDAQ

Under Australian law administrators Peter James Gothard, James Douglas Dampney and William Martin Colwell of KPMG have taken control of the company’s Australian operations.

2) Victoria decimates local steel sector – Weld Australia (October 9)

Welding sector peak body Weld Australia has called for immediate action against the offshoring of Victorian government infrastructure projects in favour of ‘cheap, unsafe imported steel’.

Weld Australia, which represents thousands of local welders and fabricators, said Victoria’s actions had already decimated the local steel manufacturing industry, costing jobs, investment, and threatening the sovereign capability of Australia’s manufacturing sector.

In the past six to 12 months, Victorian industry has seen massive increase in the volume of imported fabricated steel – according to a statement evidence suggests that since the beginning of the year, over 28,000 tonnes of steel has been offshored.

1) Holden pivot wins for Walkinshaw (November 26) 

The one-time crown jewel of the Holden world has been transformed into the future of car-making in Australia, wrote Paul Gover.

Walkinshaw Automotive is now a ‘remanufacturing’ powerhouse with direct links to six major carmakers – and more on the way.

Its core business is right-hand drive conversions of full-sized pick-up trucks from the USA, but it also does enhancement work for a number of smaller one-tonne utes.

And the most popular podcast episode?

By far the most-downloaded interview was with Tim Cheston, Senior Research Manager at Harvard Kennedy School’s Growth Lab, about Australia’s continued decline in the Economic Complexity Index rankings.

 

 



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