Manufacturing awards celebrate innovation as industry calls for greater support

As @AuManufacturing prepares to deliver our 2025 Australia's 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers report this week, Simran Gill gives a wrap-up of the recent awards event. There are also video interviews from the day with Rux Energy, the Smartcrete CRC, Allegro Energy, Advanced Navigation, the Australian Business Growth Fund, Mapei Australia, and Australia Wide Engineering. 

Australia's manufacturing industry showcased its innovation prowess at the 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers awards in Melbourne on last month, with industry leaders emphasising the critical importance of such recognition events for the sector's future.

Kyle Griggs from Advanced Navigation, which designs navigation devices for mining, defence and autonomous vehicles, said manufacturing has fundamentally changed over three decades. “It's now all based around technology. A lot of the general manufacturing is going offshore. So being able to collaborate and recognise the companies that have invested into the technology, into design, and into people” is crucial for Australia's manufacturing future.

The sentiment was echoed by Davide Carpenito from Mapei, who praised the event for enabling manufacturers to “understand what happens in the rest of the manufacturing industry that's outside our field of knowledge.”

Dr Jehan Kanga, founder and CEO of Rex Energy, which develops advanced hydrogen storage materials, highlighted Australia's deep manufacturing capability but noted financing remains a challenge. “The missing pieces really [are] financing and funding. We're going overseas to get our capital investment,” Kanga said, calling for government to become a “market maker” similar to policies in Singapore, the UK and the US.

Hugh Ong from the Smartcrete CRC emphasised that awards events provide “really good opportunity for innovative companies to really network and see what else is happening in other businesses so that they can create those opportunities to either collaborate or opportunities to learn from each other.”

For startups like Allegra Energy, co-founder Rohan Borah said recognition events provide vital morale boosts. “I go back to my team and be like, this is what we got and we got recognised. And that's a morale booster for all of them.”

Isabella Jones from the Australian Business Growth Fund noted the importance of supporting manufacturing for “sovereignty building in Australia.”

You can see video interviews from the big day below.