The first investments from the Albanese government’s landmark $15 billion manufacturing fund will be revealed within weeks as part of series A or B raises of local startups.
The National Reconstruction Fund (NRF) Corporation’s investment chief Dr Mary Manning revealed the first deals are imminent at the InnovationAus Awards in Sydney on Wednesday night.
“In the coming weeks, we hope to announce our first Series A/B venture capital investments in some of Australia’s most exciting startups, including some previous winners of the InnovationAus Awards,” Dr Manning said.
The Corporation’s chief investment officer gave no more away on the funding recipients but earlier namechecked past award winners like Sea Forest, Samsara Eco, Quantum Brilliance, Harrison.ai and Gilmore Space Technologies.
The landmark deals will arrive after a multi-year journey to establish the Corporation, which has received over 350 proposals since opening its doors in November last year.
Dr Manning said the proposals had consistently revealed that innovative companies continue to face a tight funding market and are under pressure to move offshore to access bigger markets and list on more liquid stock exchanges. As manufacturers, they also face a “chicken and egg” problem in Australia.
“For manufacturing companies, they need significant investment in factories and facilities to manufacture their products at scale, but it’s difficult to get funding without evidence that scale production will be successful,” Dr Manning said.
The $15 billion NRF was established by the Albanese government to help fill the gap for transformative manufacturing projects in priority through loans and equity stakes that can deliver returns for taxpayers.
“15 billion is a lot of money within equity,” said Dr Manning, who arrived at the NRF Corporation in June from equities investment manager Aphinity.
“Within equity we can do early stage, series A and B, we can do C and D, we can do growth equity, we can do pre-IPO and we can also invest in listed equities.
“That is a huge mandate where we can work with companies right from the early stages until the IPO.”
The government has been criticised for the slow deployment of NRF billions and still needs to pass enabling legislation for its wider industrial policy agenda.
Other nations are also accelerating their own state support in a global race for innovative businesses and domestic capabilities that has spurred interventionist industry policy around the world.
“What we must do as a government is learn the lessons of the past and look at the great challenges and opportunities of our future. And craft an industrial and innovation strategy that gets Australia and Australians where they need to be,” Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia Tim Ayres said at the awards on Wednesday.
“And that is what we are doing. That is what a Future Made in Australia is about — the largest pro manufacturing industrial policy in Australia’s history. That is what the National Reconstruction Fund is about.”
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