Siemens to put faith in Yatala base
GERMAN electrical engineering giant Siemens will invest $25 million in the Gold Coast economy after moving its cutting-edge research facility from Loganholme to Yatala.
The company, which has moved to a 1470sq m facility at 2-4 Union Cct, plans to increase staff from 30 to 50 in the next few years and production of its flagship Fusesaver product from 6000 to more than 10,000 units.
Kaon Holdings developed Fusesaver, billed as the “world’s fastest switching technology capable of reconnecting the supply of electricity almost instantaneously”.
The company, cofounded by Dr Brett Watson in 2006, was sold to Siemens in 2012 on the strength of its Fusesaver device.
Part of the $25 million Siemens investment in the new facility is for a production line for a product called Compact Recloser.
Dr Watson said the product had huge potential for Siemens.
“It is like a big brother to the Fusesaver. That is targeted at rural power distribution whereas this new product will be applied to urban power distribution,” he said.
“We see there is a larger market potential there. It is a larger more highly weighted product with more technology and features to cope with the more diverse demands of the urban network.”
Siemens will export to more than 30 countries from its new base in Yatala including the US, UK and Brazil and some more unusual destinations including Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus.
Last year UK Power Networks placed a £1.5 million ($2.74 million) order for Fusesaver – the largest order outside of Australia for the product.
In Australia, Energy Queensland is a customer as well as Powercor, the company that owns and manages poles and wires delivering electricity to nearly 780,000 homes and businesses in Victoria.
It installed 600 units across its network to help reduce the risk of bushfires that could be caused by arc ignitions from fuse breakdowns.
Dr Watson said the decision to move is because the company had outgrown its previous 500sq m base at Loganholme.
“Our business was really starting to take off and the previous facility was becoming a bottleneck for that,” he said.
“We did not have the space for the volume of the product we are now dispatching. On top of that we have new products coming out of research and development. This investment by Siemens is to enable us to continue to do that in Queensland and be a globally competitive exporter.”
Dr Watson said the company was seeing huge growth for the Fusesaver product, with sales increasing 30 per cent year on year.
“We see the potential to produce 10,000 to 12,000 per year within the next four or five years,” he said
Fusesaver protects overhead distribution networks in rural areas by detecting, opening and clearing faults in as little as 10 milliseconds.
The company says the fault clearing speed reduces the risk of bushfires by diminishing the probability of an arc ignition causing a fire.
Yesterday, Siemens officially opened the new Yatala facility in a ceremony attended by State Development Minister Cameron Dick and Siemens Australia chairman and CEO Jeff Connolly.
Mr Connolly said Fusesaver was a manufacturing success story for Queensland.
“The success of Fusesaver reiterates that Australia can be a competitive manufacturer and scale globally,” he said.
“We’ve already been able to take Fusesaver to 30 countries and that’s just the beginning. Energy security is a household topic at the moment and Dr Watson, one of the inventors of the product, and his team have created something that’s not only unique, but helps energy utilities deliver energy security especially in rural areas in Australia but also around the world.”