Bringing back Australian Manufacturing: Discard programmed obsolescence

basilio said:

I think your idea makes really good sense SP. If I was looking for a businessman who would run a thoughtful ruler over the idea it would be Twiggy Forrest.

There would be so many synergies with his current projects of massive electrification. He already has precedents of simply buying up companies with the technologies and talents he wants and enclosing them in his public and private companies. Be interesting to see if he has been considering such a move.

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sptrawler said:

As @bk1 said, to start from scratch would be a massive undertaking and also as bk1 said there is intellectual property costs, if you are buying off the shelf technology.
The easiest way would be for the Govt to give tax incentives to get either established manufacturers to build the plants, or give incentives to existing battery material miners to value add and increase taxes on them if they don't.
If the Govt doesn't get involved it will end up costing the taxpayer hugely to transition from fossil fuels, they need to encourage value adding so they broaden the tax base and the employment base, otherwise the tax base will shrink and the cost to install the renewables will fall on that diminishing tax base and increasing welfare base.
IMO doing nothing, as we are doing at the moment, isn't an option.
The Govt can't just say we are going to reduce emissions by x amount and have no plan as to how to get there, other than throw money at transmission lines and hope that people will build sufficient generation and storage, that isn't a plan it is a wish list.
The private sector will only build what gives them a return on equity, a lot of this wont and the Govt has to realise this, so they need to start and invest in long term returns like value adding secondary processing and tertiary manufacturing where we have an advantage.
It ain't rocket science, they are going to have to give incentives for sustainable long term growth, not just for the next election.

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qldfrog said:

Nah everyone knows renewables are cheaper..ABC has told us this for 15y.so market and regulations should be enough...
The trouble when narrative self feed science and technology illiterate decision makers, whose only advisers are lobbies

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sptrawler said:

Another one bites the dust, well it is only listing on the U.S market, for the moment.

High-performance wheel maker to leave home in race to thrive

Geelong-based carbon fibre wheel innovator, Carbon Revolution, will list its manufacturing business on the NASDAQ exchange in America.

www.smh.com.au

The difficulty of getting financial backing in Australia to spread its wings globally is driving Geelong-based carbon fibre wheel innovator, Carbon Revolution, to head to the US.
ASX-listed Carbon Revolution makes lightweight carbon wheels for high-performance brands like Ferrari, GM’s Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford GT Supercar from a 10,000 square metre facility about an hour’s drive from Melbourne.

“There are a lot of good ideas in Australia, a lot of very capable people, and many technologies are developed here, but, typically, they’ve gone offshore at an earlier stage than where we are at. We’re not offshoring our technology, we’re just sourcing capital from where it’s available,” Dingle said.

Carbon Revolution has a market capitalisation of $32 million, a minnow by today’s standards. The company maintains it’s in the early stages of a typical adoption curve for new technology in the auto industry where innovation is usually rolled out at the luxury end of the market before making its way mainstream.

Last week, Carbon Revolution secured $US60 million in debt funding through PIUS Limited, a subsidiary of American global insurance broker and risk manager Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, that it will use to restructure existing debt, fund further expansion and for working capital.

However, Dingle said the company has always held long-term aspirations to set up manufacturing sites closer to its key US and European customers. “We expect to maintain a meaningful amount of manufacturing here. It’s just that the capital is not available to support growth beyond that,” he said.
“We’ve always said we will manufacture offshore, as we earn the right to.”

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Dona Ferentes said:

NSW will have 7 new ferries built in Australia, to replace the Rivercats, now 30 years old. Of course some complain the jobs are in Hobart, but anything would be better than the 10 recently imported ones that are rubbish.

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Dona Ferentes said:

Indonesian president Joko Widodo is coming to Australia next week

'Half of the world's lithium is in the country of kangaroos': Indonesia looks to Australia to realise EV battery plans

As Indonesia increases the use of electric vehicles at home, it also wants to partner with Australia as it strives to become a global EV hub.

www.abc.net.au

As a big nickel producer, they don't have the lithium .... expect some joint developments?

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rederob said:

Maybe if we value added "energy" to make cheap steel or some other products we could get some traction.
And maybe there are other sectors where some basic levels of value adding can occur, and would make practical and economic sense.
But while the idea of a giga factory sounds nice, how do we compete against a market that makes batteries by the multimillion and lives next door to the production facility it supplies? Also, the R&D essential to battery making, let alone its future focus, does not exist in Australia. Unless we can actually get a company who has these skills to move new production capacity to Australia I personally can't see how we get a foothold.

We in Australia have a market size of less than 1% of that in Asia, so what makes anyone think we should try to compete in terms of manufacturing, unless it's a niche product?

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farmerge said:

Hmmmmm but can the Indons be trusted????

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qldfrog said:

Or can the Indonesians trust us?
Are we going to throw the contracts in the bin next time they deal with Russia so that we do not anger our master, or when they will next bomb the occupied PNG .
Trust is both way.
All recent super economic powers have a cheap manufacturing neighbour to leverage and succeed
Us with Mexico, Germany with the eastern block, China internally with its western inland province
When I arrived here 30y ago, I thought Indonesia was the natural go to for Australia..but we just surrendered to China and RE mania....

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rederob said:

Maybe if we value added "energy" to make cheap steel or some other products we could get some traction.
And maybe there are other sectors where some basic levels of value adding can occur, and would make practical and economic sense.

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mullokintyre said:

Whatever the policies, they are failing miserably.
Alan Kohler pasted a graph on ABC news last night highlighting just how far we have fallen.
The rest of the world has flatlined, OZ is still going down.
Even the US has turned upwards.
View attachment 159564

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mullokintyre said:

Whatever the policies, they are failing miserably.
Alan Kohler pasted a graph on ABC news last night highlighting just how far we have fallen.
The rest of the world has flatlined, OZ is still going down.
Even the US has turned upwards.
View attachment 159564

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UMike said:

Certain it still has not improved.

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mullokintyre said:

Whatever the policies, they are failing miserably.
Alan Kohler pasted a graph on ABC news last night highlighting just how far we have fallen.
The rest of the world has flatlined, OZ is still going down.
Even the US has turned upwards.
View attachment 159564

Click to expand...