Celebrating Australian innovation
During a visit to Port Kembla, CommBank Group Executive Business Banking Mike Vacy-Lyle said Hysata demonstrated why Australia needed to do more to celebrate businesses commercialising home-grown innovation.
“We need to make heroes out of innovators,” he said, adding that Australian companies developing intellectual property, manufacturing locally and exporting globally would play an essential role in lifting productivity.
“It is absolutely critical that we celebrate those that are embracing advanced technologies, advanced manufacturing, the development of IP, keeping that IP in Australia and commercialising it globally, and putting Australia on the map as a country that has a whole heap of world firsts.”
Hysata recently completed a $172 million Series B capital raise to scale up manufacturing, which Vacy-Lyle said was the largest clean-energy capital raise of its kind in Australian history.
Vacy-Lyle also pointed to the Illawarra as one of Australia’s fastest-growing regions, saying businesses like Hysata were helping drive investment, jobs and advanced manufacturing.
He looks to Hysata as exactly the type of business CommBank hopes to recognise through its Innovation Awards, which are open to businesses of all sizes across three categories – Emerging Innovators, Scaling Innovators and Proven Innovators.
Entry is open to businesses right across Australia and you don’t need to bank with CommBank to apply. Winners share in a prize pool of cash grants, mentoring, cloud credits and workshops.
Looking ahead
With its first commercial order secured, Barrett said the focus has shifted from proving the technology to delivering it and continuing to grow manufacturing.
He said Hysata’s success reflected the support it had received throughout its journey, from suppliers to local, state and federal governments.
“We’ll try to pay that back,” Barrett said, “by becoming an era-defining company for Australia.”
