Manufacturing

The expansion of one of the Clarence Valley’s largest timber factories, Big River Group is a huge boost to the local economy and sets the bar high in supplying the sustainable manufacturing of high-quality specialist technical timber products across the State. The upgrade includes the installation of state-of-the-art machinery that will substantially increase Big River’s output enabling them to supply an unprecedented volume of timber products.

“Under the bark of trees are powerful solutions”. This year’s International Day of Forests celebrates the role of trees in providing powerful solutions for a better world.

About 40 salaried jobs at the Maryvale Mill will be gone by June as Opal moves to slash further positions across the company in a bid to stabilise its financial performance. The 40 are believed to be among about 220 salaried company-wide employees who will be made redundant, adding to the more than 300 workers who lost their jobs when Maryvale's white paper production plant was closed late last year.

The Snowy 2.0 Cooma precast manufacturing facility has hit another significant milestone and completed production of 100,000 of the 130,000 concrete segments needed to line 27 kilometres of tunnels for the pumped-hydro megaproject.

More jobs are likely to be lost at the Maryvale Paper Mill, where more than 300 workers have already been made redundant as the parent company Opal continues a major shutdown to transition to a packaging paper manufacturer. White paper production - the well-known Reflex copy paper brand - ceased before Christmas, 2023. "This unfortunate situation has led to more than 300 redundancies to-date at Opal," a company spokeswoman said.

Why do both sides of federal politics continue to think we need to have a shipbuilding industry as part of our naval defence sector? Every year we spend billions of dollars trying to build ships in Australia when the most cost effective thing to do is import them off the shelf from our allies.

When UAG Bio Nutrients needed specific plastic manufacturing expertise to produce its patented vermiculture modules, it turned to Select Plastics ... The process is the first in the world to efficiently and cleanly integrate anaerobic digestion and vermiculture at industrial scale to convert organic waste into bio-fertiliser and clean energy.

Scoot Boots are a healthier, natural barefoot alternative to metal horseshoes to help protect horses’ hooves and the innovative Australian company has taken out the prestigious E-Commerce Exporter of the Year Award at 61st Australian Export Awards.

Victoria’s native forest industry officially closes at the end of the month, but Radial Timber in Yarram is going nowhere ... it’s in survival mode. “We’re looking to source what local plantation material we can get – we’ve got two signed up at the moment and one should be starting to harvest,” said Radial’s managing director, Chris McEvoy ... Radial will concentrate on its new peeling plant and its bioenergy plant, which operates by pyrolysis.

After being wiped out in Lismore’s biggest flood in living memory, the Norco Ice Cream factory reopened last Friday following a $100 million dollar rebuild. Challenges faced during the rebuild included securing electrical equipment due to global supply chain shortages...

A new collaboration between Deakin University researchers and Australia’s largest commercial linen supplier Simba Global is tackling a critical global issue, the spread of harmful microplastics through our laundry.

John Williams. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the growing of wheat and its conversion to flour had become major industries in the colony of Victoria. Steam-driven mills were set up in major cereal-growing areas and Nhill’s future prosperity was built upon the growing of wheat and the establishment of a steam grinding mill.

Yagi & Co., Ltd. announces that we have made and started operating a proprietary system for consistent traceability management, from field to yarn, via a proprietary management system that links the international certifications for the organic cotton produced in India that we handle ... This system enables consistent traceability management from the cotton field to thread.

The Australian Hide Skin and Leather Exporters Association (AHSLEA) along with 27 other international leather industry organisations, is calling on the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) to recognise the positive impact of natural materials such as leather on people, lives, and livelihoods and as a means of directly mitigating climate impact ... AHSLEA Executive Officer Dennis King said over the last four decades Australian leather processors have implemented a range of exciting sustainable initiatives to reduce leather’s carbon footprint including adopting cleaner tanning technologies and practices.

Minister for Regional Development Harriet Shing announced the new study for a renewable fuel manufacturing hub in the portside city ... The feasibility study will be led by Portland H2 – a subsidiary of HAMR Energy - – towards establishing a plant converting plantation forestry residue to green methanol.

The native hardwood industry welcomed announcement by Minister Tierney to offer additional support for workers, contractors, communities and new regional businesses but was disappointed that the mill exit package doubly punished those businesses that had acted in good faith, said Deb Kerr, CEO of the Victorian Forest Products Association (VFPA).  

With more growers opting to store grain for extended periods, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is reminding growers of the benefits of gas-tight sealable storage in controlling and preventing insect pest infestations in stored grain. 

The state government decision to close the native forest timber industry culminates eight years of mismanagement that turned VicForests from a profitable business into a loss maker, an analysis by a Traralgon consultant has found ... Mr Cameron said Australian hardwood sawn timber mill gate revenue sold for 3.5 times the price of Australian softwood sawn timber, and contributed to much greater value-adding and job creation than softwood.