Manufacturing news briefs — stories you might have missed

ACCC will not oppose acquisition of BGC Cementitious The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said on Thursday that it will not oppose the acquisition of BGC Cementitious by Cement Australia, Holcim, Heidelberg Materials Australia (HMA) and Adbri. The ACCC said it decided not to oppose the transaction after the merger parties amended their original proposal.…

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Government signs $1.7 billion, five-year contract with Anduril on Ghost Shark

The federal government will spend $1.7 billion to acquire a new fleet of Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous undersea vehicles, signing a contract with Anduril Australia for delivery, maintenance and continued development over the next five years. According to a statement from defence minister Richard Marles and defence industry minister Pat Conroy on Wednesday, the fleet…

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Physical AI is changing manufacturing – here’s what the era of intelligent robotics looks like

By Theresa Wolf and Andrea Willige Automation helped shape the First Industrial Revolution – and it continues to evolve in today’s Fourth. While automation has long been part of the manufacturing landscape, recent advances in artificial intelligence, vision systems and robotics hardware are enabling a new generation of more intelligent and adaptable machines. A new…

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Manufacturing is about quality and robots – not cheap wages

Following the launch of a new campaign by the Manufacturing Industry Skills Alliance aiming to “challenge outdated stereotypes” attached to manufacturing, Professor Beth Webster and Dr Alexander Gosling focus on some common misconceptions about what drives competitiveness in the industry.  It is a myth that manufacturing can only thrive in low wage environments.  Much publicly-aired…

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Manufacturing revenues for July recorded third-best growth of industries tracked

Manufacturing revenue figures are continuing to grow, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, outperforming a 13-industry aggregate for the month of July. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Monthly Business Turnover Indicator found an increase of 4.2 per cent for manufacturers compared to July 2024. The industry’s rate of growth for the year to July…

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Conflux Joins Honeywell-led hybrid-powered aircraft R&D consortium

Additively manufactured heat exchanger specialist Conflux Technology has joined the Honeywell-led TheMa4HERA consortium, a project focussing on thermal management for hybrid-electric regional aircraft. According to a statement from Conflux this week, the clean aviation project TheMa4HERA (Thermal Management for Hybrid Electric Regional Aircraft) aims to develop “advanced thermal management systems and architectures for next-generation hybrid-electric…

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New campaign attempts to correct dated perceptions of manufacturing

The Manufacturing Industry Skills Alliance – one of the federally-appointed Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) – has launched a new campaign aiming to “challenge outdated stereotypes” attached to the industry. According to a statement from MISA on Tuesday, its Make It ManuFACTuring campaign hopes to communicate the possibility of a modern, “future-focused” career in the…

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Gallium arsenide chip can detect and measure nanoplastics pollution in water

Researchers at University of Melbourne and Germany’s University of Stuttgart have developed a photonics-based method, which they say is able to detect nanoplastics as well as being “cheap, portable and powerful”. According to a statement from University of Melbourne on Tuesday, the invention offers hope for scalable monitoring of a type of pollution that can…

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