Last night Austeng and Imagine Intelligent Materials jointly won an award for the establishment of Australia’s first commercial graphene plant.
The Australian Engineering Excellence Awards, Victoria, saw Austeng (a Geelong-based engineering company) and Imagine IM (a graphene technology company) take out the Innovation, Research and Development category.
“Austeng thanks Imagine IM for the confidence shown in Austeng. Imagine IM has very much shown the way forward by recognising and embracing this new technology collaborating with universities on research, joining with local engineering/manufacturing and bringing on board a launch customer,” said Austeng managing director Ross George in a statement.
“This collaborative model has enabled Australia to take its place as a world leader in commercialisation of graphene”.
Phil Aitchison, Head of R&D and Operations at Imagine IM, said that bringing graphene innovations to market showed that Australia could be a world leader in manufacturing.
“Graphene is a platform technology and Imagine and Austeng have taken graphene out of the laboratory and into commercial application,” he said.
“We shall continue to advance our roadmap for large scale industrial uses of graphene for sensing and in smart materials.”
Imagine IM’s graphene will be released later this year in a smart geotextiles product from Geofabrics Australasia, and has been successfully tested in field trials.
For an interview from March in Manufacturers’ Monthly with Austeng and Imagine IM about the plant, please click here.