In 2022, a remarkable chapter in Australia's biotechnology research unfolded with the opening of the CSIRO National Vaccine and Therapeutics Lab in Clayton, Victoria. This state-of-the-art facility has been designed to play a pivotal role in the research and development of vaccines and drug treatments, ultimately contributing to Australia's innovative potential in the life sciences sector. At the heart of this ground-breaking lab, stainless steel has emerged as a critical component, ensuring the facility's functionality, quality, and safety.

The facility’s primary objective is to transform vaccine and drug candidates into products that can be manufactured onshore in substantial quantities for clinical trials. It

Stainless steel has delivered confidence in the production and quality of the globally-trending beverage, kombucha.

Kombucha - also locally known in Australia as 'booch' - is a fermented tea drink, produced using sugar and a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY). Its composition dates back thousands of years but the drink has grown in popularity over recent times due to its health and probiotic benefits.

Remedy is currently the largest kombucha producer in Australia and New Zealand and the third largest globally. With kombucha market demand expected to grow 15% year-on-year to 2030, Remedy took the lead to consolidate

When you last snacked on some almonds, you may not have given much thought to how they were harvested and made ready for your consumption. However, like almost all food and beverages, on their journey to your snack bowl, they encountered some stainless steel bearing equipment.

Australia is a dominant producer of almonds, with the Murray Darling region accounting for almost a third of production. Kooba, located a few kilometres south of Griffith in south-central New South Wales and off the Murrumbidgee River, is the site of a large almond orchard having received significant recent investment.

Irrigation is critical to

Stainless steel has delivered the lifeblood for the evolving brewery operation of one of Australia’s largest independent beer businesses.

Brick Lane was founded by 25 shareholders in 2017 with the vision to grow a sustainable, more inclusive, independent brewery focused on quality, flexibility, and sustainability. Delivering its own craft beer, ciders, seltzers and other drinks, Brick Lane extends its facilities to the wider brewing community, offering its brewing and packaging services to like-minded partners to encourage and support the growth of independent and craft beer in Australia.

Critical to Brick Lane’s success was the design and construction of a state-of-the-art

Australia is in a craft beer renaissance. The materials used in beer production has evolved over the years, and today, stainless steel is the material of choice and industry standard in modern brewing. Let’s look at some of the benefits.

 
Corrosion resistant

Stainless steels are excellent combatants of corrosion. This resistance to attack is due to the naturally occurring chromium-rich oxide film formed on the surface of the steel, which self-repairs in the presence of oxygen.

With the correct selection of alloys and application of good design principles and proper fabrication practices, stainless steel equipment will perform successfully. 300-series

Water quality plays a crucial role in the decontamination and reprocessing of reusable medical devices, and stainless steel has helped facilitate the standard required for their sterilisation. 

The release of AS/NZS 4187:2014 Reprocessing of reusable medical devices in health service organisations requires hospitals across Australia to comply with a range of stringent new requirements consistent with European and global standards for sterilisation processes. Its aim is to ensure reusable medical devices are adequately cleaned, disinfected and sterilised to protect patients and prevent infection.

Water quality is critical for sterile processing, and one requirement of the revised standard includes the replacement of non-compliant cleaning,

Stainless steel continues to be the material of choice for commercial kitchen equipment, meeting and exceeding the rigorous demands of busy food service operations.

Dubbed as the ‘Home of Sport in Western Sydney’, Bankwest Stadium opened in April 2019 in the heart of Parramatta. The 30,000-capacity, multi-purpose rectangular stadium features a steep tiered seating arrangement across five levels, offering the best viewing quality of live events. Sport matches including rugby league, rugby union and soccer are some of the arena’s main events. To complement the unparalleled live event experience, the stadium’s clever design ensures spectators are never more than 30

World-class processing systems demand high quality products, innovative features, and long-term yield increase, all of which have been delivered through superior workmanship, engineering, and the use of stainless steel.

ASSDA Member, INOX Australia, was engaged by a Melbourne based stock and soup manufacturer to design the integral process, fabricate, install, and commission a beef, chicken, seafood, and vegetable stock processing system. The processing system is entirely fabricated in stainless steel as it has been essential to the project design and fabrication, being the material of choice in demanding hygienic environments that involve high heat. 

Exceeding their client’s expectations, INOX

The aim of AS 1528: Stainless steel tubes and tube fittings for food processing and hygienic applications is to standardise hygienic tube and fittings for use in dairy, food and beverage manufacturing. It has been successful in maintaining the required food safety standards in Australia and New Zealand.

AS 1528 was first issued in 2001 and developed by an ASSDA group of stakeholders in the manufacture, supply, fabrication and use of stainless steel tube and associated fittings in the food manufacturing industries.

Changing industry practice, some existing errors, internal consistencies and expansion of sizes required a revision of the standard.

A growing demand for quality wines in China has seen its third-largest winemaker venture onto Australian soil with a new state-of-the-art winery incorporating over 800t of stainless steel. 

Weilong Wines’ winery in Red Cliffs, Northern Victoria is the first Australian winery development of its magnitude for many years, and the company’s investment in the Murray-Darling region is a testament to the strong reputation and quality of Australian wine. Grape crushing for the export-only wine has already commenced following the completion of the winery’s construction in March 2019 and is expected to have wine bottled before the year-end in time for

World-class infrastructure demands high quality products and long-term asset performance, both of which have been delivered through superior workmanship and the use of stainless steel.

Fuchs Lubricants Australasia opened its new $33 million purpose-built plant at Beresfield, New South Wales in February 2018. Operating in Australia since 1979, Fuchs’ expanded and relocated from its original factory in Newcastle due to strong business growth, now being the only major lubricants company to still manufacture products in the country.

Fuchs’ new plant is a blending operation, features two highly-developed laboratories and is three times larger than the old factory, producing 10,000 lubricant

The new facility in Merrifield Estate on Melbourne's outer northern fringe will allow Dulux to step into the next generation of paint manufacturing technology and innovation. Dulux's aim was to design and construct a state-of-the-art facility, so using quality products was essential to achieve this. Stainless steel in 300 series grades was an integral part of the project design, including storage vessels and over 10,000m of food grade, quality tube complying with AS1528.

CONCEPT STAGE

In 2015, Dulux announced its decision to construct the new state-of-the-art, highly automated paint factory at an investment of $165m.

The Dulux plant, the first

Wave Discs Revolutionises Traditional Drying Process

In the search to find a more efficient way of manufacturing industrial disc dryers for the meat-rendering industry, Melbourne-based engineering company Pinches Group has developed a new technology called Wave Disc.

THE CHALLENGE

Traditional rotary discs comprise of a series of stainless steel discs, welded back-to-back and attached to a centre pipe. Together, the pipe and discs make up the shaft, which operates under steam pressure and rotates within a stainless steel shell.

Employed throughout the world in a wide range of industries, disc dryers are commonly used to dry materials such as coal,

Over 17 tonnes of stainless steel has been used for the upgrade of a premier meat processing plant to support the growing local and global demands of Australian red meat supply.

The Australian Lamb Company (ALC) currently exports lamb to more than 60 countries worldwide, and recently secured a 10-year contract to process lamb for Coles supermarkets in eastern Australia.

ALC’s multi-million dollar investment to support demand and increase production capacity included the expansion and upgrade of its meat processing operation in Colac, Victoria.

ASSDA Member and Accredited Fabricator Stainless Steel Associated Fabricators (SSAF) Australia was engaged to design, manufacture

Connections are vital

Any visit to a dairy, beverage or food processing plant will drive home the critical importance of the connections between the tanks, mixers, driers, pumps, etc. The image above (courtesy of TFG Group) showing an image of a brewery is a typical example. These tubes and/or pipes carry the process materials, the heating or cooling or wash water, gases, and also dispose of the wastes.

Getting the right standard

Except for high pressure or very aggressive environments, most tube is rolled into shape and welded longitudinally. For mechanical or structural service such as columns or handrails,

Stainless steel has helped deliver improved environmental performance and increased efficiency for a major food production company.

In 2014, Australian agribusiness GrainCorp announced a $125 million investment in a consolidation strategy to integrate its GrainCorp Foods’ manufacturing operations, including the relocation of its Brisbane plant to the existing West Footscray facility in Victoria. This move effectively terminates the use of its coal-fired equipment, giving GrainCorp Foods the opportunity to invest in efficient and environmentally sustainable technology and significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

As a result, GrainCorp Foods’ West Footscray operation commenced its expansion and upgrade in 2015 to deliver a

Coca-Cola Amatil is reducing the carbon footprint of its 600ml PET bottles by 22% with the help of stainless steel.

Innovation in process technology and the successful application of stainless steel has led to efficiency gains and sustainable outcomes for one of the world's most recognised brands in the food and beverage industry.

In 2011, Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) announced a $450 million investment in PET bottle self-manufacture, or ‘blowfill’ technology at its production facilities across Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Blow-fill technology is a manufacturing technique that allows companies to produce their own PET (polyethylene terephthalate)

This is an abridged version of a story that first appeared under the same title in Stainless Steel Focus No. 07/2012.

The Nickel Institute's director of promotion, Peter Cutler, and consultant Gary Coates, reveal some of the reasons for the continuing popularity of nickel in stainless steels.

Stainless steel is everywhere in our world and contributes to all aspects of our lives. We find stainless steel in our homes, in our buildings and offices, in the vehicles we travel in and in every imaginable industrial sector. Yet the first patents for stainless steel were issued only 100 years ago.

How

As bottled water continues to gain popularity in Australia, maintaining the quality and purity of the water extracted from natural springs is paramount.

This is just one example within the food and beverage sector where hygiene is vitally important and, therefore, stainless steel continues to be the material of choice for processing and storage facilities.

In 2011, Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) commissioned ‘Project Flint’ to upgrade three spring water storage tanks for their Moorabbin plant in Victoria plus an additional two tanks for their Thebarton plant in South Australia.

GEA Process Engineering Australia engaged Byford Equipment on behalf of CCA to

A worrying trend among Australia's major resource companies is the increasing amount of engineering, detailing and fabrication work being sent offshore - a move that has had significant impact on local fabrication. But there are some positive signs in the food and beverage sector that local fabricators are more than capable of meeting design and fabrication expectations.

When ASSDA member and Accredited Fabricator, A&G Engineering, put in a bid to build 10 x 100 hectolitre beer fermenters for Casella Estate - a company best known for their Yellowtail wine label - they had to compete against companies as far