Bellamy’s fine over updates
INFANT milk formula supplier Bellamy’s Australia has paid a $ 66,000 fine after the corporate regulator alleged the company failed to properly inform the market of its financial performance last year.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission issued Bellamy’s with an infringement notice for the alleged breach of its continuous disclosure obligations between October and December in 2016.
ASIC investigated the company’s market disclosures after Bellamy’s said on December 2 last year that it expected revenue in the first half of the 2016- 17 financial year would be lower than expected at about $ 120 million and its revenue in the second half of the year would be similar if trends continued. INTERNET service woes are forcing small businesses to return to the dark ages of manual printouts and fax machines and are preventing companies from growing, new research suggests.
A survey by online accounting software company Xero of more than 1000 small business owners across Australia aimed to assess the effectiveness of internet connections and speeds, including the NBN and other internet services.
It found a third of small businesses are having difficulty accessing fast, reliable and affordable internet connections which, in turn, is affecting business productivity and hiring. About half of small businesses are still paying for poor phone and internet connectivity, research found. NORTH Queensland has the potential to become Australia’s renewable energy hub, providing cheap power for industry and igniting its minerals processing sector, energy experts say.
But both Simon Bartlett, a former chief executive of government- owned transmission authority Powerlink, and Townsville- based energy consultant John O’Brien say Labor’s and the LNP’s North Queensland energy plans look doomed to fail.
Labor wants to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a North Queensland Clean Energy Hub, developing transmission lines to link stranded renewable projects at Cairns, Kidston, Hughenden and Townsville.
The LNP says it will approve a coal- fired power station, possibly at Collinsville, within its first 100 days of forming government.
Professor Bartlett, now the chair in electricity transmission at the University of Queensland, said both parties’ plans were flawed because of a lack of electricity load in North Queensland to support the generation and a lack of transmission capacity to send surplus electricity south where most of the State’s load is.
While the grid- connected Townsville, Cairns and Mackay load is around 1100 megawatts, more than 830MW of renewable projects are under way or being finalised with another 3000MW of projects in the pipeline in North Queensland.
Professor Bartlett said the generation would choke transmission lines south, while he doubted another coal- fired power station would built in Australia.
“You won’t be able to export ( the electricity south) on the existing grid,” Professor Bartlett said.
He believed the answer was developing big pumped hydro storage projects on the Burdekin Falls Dam and the Tully Millstream river system.
Surplus wind and solar generation could be used to support 2500MW of pumped storage hydro power and in turn support the intermittent nature of solar and wind generation. ever be
“North Queensland will become the energy hub. It will be the place with the lowest ( transmission) losses and prices and that will attract industry to Townsville,” Professor Bartlett said.
John O’Brien, a proponent of plans to connect the North West Minerals Province with the east coast electricity grid, said the lack of load was the issue for both Labor’s clean energy hub and the LNP’s coal- fired power station.
He said the extra industrial loads around Mount Isa would help make northern generation more viable while also providing access to the 500MW of gas- fired generation at Mount Isa to support intermittent power projects.
“My view is the cost of the infrastructure to connect all the prospective ( renewable) generation will likely make the ( clean energy) hub uneconomic if it is just connecting into the current North Queensland energy system,” Mr O’Brien said.
Powerlink is conducting a feasibility study into the hub and is due to report to government early next year.