GOVERNMENT NEWS

$110m NSW regional industry fund announced

The NSW Government will invest $110m to activate new and emerging industries, drive high value jobs and help the regions reach their economic potential.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW Paul Toole said the Regional Investment Activation Fund was aimed at making regional NSW the location of choice for private sector investment. “Our Government has a big, bold vision for regional NSW – and this fund is about helping bring that vision to life,” Toole said. “We’re putting more than $100m on the table to co-invest in game-changing projects that turbocharge priority industries or locations in the regions. “It will be open to expressions of interest from investors across Australia and around the world interested in expanding or setting up in regional NSW.” Toole said the fund would help activate the economic potential of the State’s Special Activation Precincts, Regional Job Precincts and other priority locations. “The NSW Government’s unprecedented investment is making regional NSW the location of choice for investors both here and around the world,” Toole said. “This fund will help support new and emerging industries where regional NSW has a competitive edge and put our communities in the box seat for the future.” The Regional Investment Activation Fund will co-invest with eligible businesses in projects that aim to deliver, significant economic, social and/or environmental benefits for a priority industry or location. Projects must be based in regional NSW, support sustainable employment opportunities and be completed by 30 May 2025.

nsw.gov.au/RIAF

RMIT supercomputer fast-tracking research

Australia’s first university cloud supercomputing facility, which allows researchers to test ideas and solutions up to 80 times faster than existing on-site servers, is now open to industry partners.

RMIT University’s AWS Cloud Supercomputing facility, or RACE, opened in July this year for RMIT researchers, who are now using it to power advances into battery technologies, photonics and geospatial science. External research partners are now able to use it as well. RACE provides fast, secure and private connections – powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AARNet – ideal for workloads that require higher speed and fewer delays than the internet. RACE Director Dr Robert Shen said the increased bandwidth gives researchers, students, and industry partners the ability make discoveries faster and for RMIT to fast-track the time between initial concepts and products going to market. “RACE will enable researchers to test out ideas and solutions up to 80 times faster compared to the existing on-premises servers,” Shen said. “Research typically involves many failures before success: this facility lets researchers fail quickly so they can fine-tune their solutions and improve them.” AWS Chief Technologist for Australia and New Zealand, Simon Elisha, said high performance computing is key to solving the most complex problems across many industries. “AWS’s portfolio of cloud services allows researchers at RMIT to focus on ground-breaking research, across a broad range of sectors, and innovate faster,” he said. “Using AWS, RMIT can securely deliver advanced computer performance, memory capacity, and scalability.” AARNet CEO Chris Hancock said the high-speed internet and communication services provided for RACE were designed to service both current and future demand. “The network AARNet has deployed for RACE is high capacity and engineered to scale to 400Gbps to provide RMIT researchers with plenty of headroom for transferring massive amounts of data to AWS on demand, now and into the future,” Hancock said. “We are using RACE to analyse our data and produce high-resolution animations that help us to interpret our data and communicate our research findings,” Spencer said. Professor Matt Duckham’s team is using the computing power to design new ways to automatically pinpoint a person’s exact location using just a verbal description of the features around them. This approach could be especially important in emergencies if satellite positioning fails. Duckham said his team now has the ability to process massive information streams including drone imagery, satellite data, data from sensor networks and crowd-sourced data that could overwhelm conventional computing facilities. “Enabling us to analyse these huge volumes of data from new sources can help better inform evidence-based policy decisions to improve public transport, traffic, infrastructure and many other aspects of quality of life,” he said. Associate Professor Thach Nguyen and team at the Integrated Photonics and Applications Centre rely heavily on high performance computing to design fingernail-sized photonic chips that can plug into optical fibre networks to make our internet faster, or plug into medical diagnostic tools to analyse how cancer cells spread in real-time. They are now using RACE to conduct research that was almost impossible with standard computing power. “Direct access to RACE means that when designing and simulating brain-like chips or creating a chip which could break the record for the world’s fastest internet, the team can run multiple processes at once with computing capability that expands and scales as needed,” said Nguyen. “RACE has provided our team with on-demand computing power anywhere, anytime to simulate our photonic chips at 10 times faster than was previously possible.” This work opens the door to new opportunities including the design of chips that could make our internet faster, help drones more accurately inspect railway infrastructure, and build handheld devices to detect ovarian cancer more accurately. RACE is supported by the Victorian Government under the Victorian Higher Education State Investment Fund and represents a step change in how universities and industries access high performance computing capabilities for advanced data processing. RACE is now officially open for industry partners with an interest in driving digital innovation in research and education.

rmit.edu.au/partner/hubs/race

Vic Defence

Strengthening Victoria’s defence supply chain

Victorian manufacturers and businesses are set to benefit from new funding which will assist them to compete for and win lucrative defence contracts, securing local jobs and boosting our economy. Minister for Industry Support and Recovery Ben Carroll has announced that $10m from the Andrews Labor Government’s Victorian Land Systems Fund will be used to support local businesses to join Hanwha Defense Australia’s supply chain to deliver the $1bn LAND 8116 Self Propelled Howitzer program. “This funding is about maximising opportunities for local businesses and manufacturers to enter Hanwha’s supply chain, ensuring more Victorian-made components are used in the company’s products worldwide,” said Minister Carroll. “The Supply Chain Uplift Program is aimed at lifting standards across Victorian SMEs and making them more competitive suppliers to Hanwha, securing more local jobs and setting them up for other lucrative contracts.” The funding, which will be distributed through a targeted investment stream and the Supply Chain Uplift Program, will maximise the value of Hanwha’s defence contracts to the state. The Supply Chain Uplift Program provides grants of up to $100,000 for Victorian small to medium-sized businesses to improve their capability through activities like upgrading business systems and facilities, gaining international accreditations and certifications, or undertaking research and product development. Hanwha was the successful bidder for LAND 8116 and is one of two final bidders for the multibillion-dollar LAND 400 Phase 3 Infantry Fighting Vehicle program being selected by the Commonwealth Government. Hanwha is also establishing a $170m Armoured Vehicle Centre of Excellence at the Avalon Airport Industrial Precinct with support from the Government, further boosting the state’s defence capabilities and creating more than 300 highly skilled local jobs in design, engineering and advanced manufacturing. More than 6,300 businesses provide services and manufacturing in Victoria’s defence sector, including equipment across military vehicle production, maritime design, aerospace components and cyber security. The sector contributes $8.4bn to the Victorian economy each year and supports around 24,300 jobs across the defence industry. Applications for the Supply Chain Uplift Program open in mid September 2022. business.vic.gov.au/scup

MeatGeoThermal

Decarbonising the meat industry using geothermal technology.

On behalf of the Australian Government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced $838,000 in funding to Hardwick Processors to install a one MW (thermal) demonstration scale heat pump and upgrade the electrical supply system at its meat processing plant in Kyneton, Victoria. The heat pump upgrade will enable the site to produce enough hot water to operate at levels to improve shelf life and access further export market growth, while helping to reduce the site's reliance on natural gas by over 75%. The project will also be able to benefit from Hardwick Processors’ previous commitments to reducing emissions by utilising existing on-site renewable energy supply infrastructure of 2.5MW solar PV and a two MWh battery storage system. Around half of the total energy used by Australian industry is due to industrial process heat, which typically uses natural gas. Reducing the reliance on natural gas for process heat represents a significant opportunity to decarbonise Australian industry and reduce exposure to volatile gas prices. Low temperature (~80°C) industrial process heat applications, such as hot water, are amongst the most accessible to supply with renewable energy. Heat pumps operate in this range comfortably and can be powered with renewable electricity. In 2019 Hardwick Processors was selected from a shortlist of manufacturers to undertake a feasibility study into using renewable energy to provide process heat, as part of a project led by the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity (A2EP) and funded by ARENA. The study found that it would be most efficient to run a smaller and less expensive heat pump continuously, storing hot water in existing thermal storage tanks. The positive results led to ARENA funding the current demonstration scale project. In addition to the heat pump installation, Hardwick Processors will also upgrade their electrical supply system to become a high voltage customer, taking any excess electricity required from the Powercor network. This upgrade will provide valuable insights into the electrical supply infrastructure requirements associated with completely electrifying process heat for industry. ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the demonstration project would help to reduce barriers to uptake for the industry. “The project offers us the opportunity to trial how using heat pumps can reduce reliance on natural gas and prove to the industry that this is technically and economically feasible and a viable solution to dramatically reduce emissions at their facilities.” “Hardwick Processors is at the forefront of helping to reduce emissions in the meat processing industry. Having already installed on-site solar PV and battery, it is now able to demonstrate how the hot water demand of industrial processing can be managed with the addition of heat pumps and use of thermal energy. This is a solution that we could see being replicated across other businesses in the industry.” Mr Miller said. ARENA also recently announced funding to Ground Source Systems to demonstrate a full-scale solar PV and ground-source heat pump system, with gas backup, for heating and cooling at a commercial broiler facility in Yanderra, NSW. The hybrid system will see LPG replaced as a fuel for heating and cooling a single shed for housing chickens. arena.gov.au/projects