Meet the innovators of Macquarie Park
Macquarie Park is renowned for its innovative culture that encourages the brightest minds to start up, spin off, scale up and accelerate business success.
The postcode is home to Macquarie University’s world-class incubator facilities, and is close to the CSIRO’s Lindfield Collaboration Hub, just beyond the Lane Cove River.
Connect MPID’s recent 2023 Macquarie Park Summit highlighted this entrepreneurial ecosystem with a showcase of five of our area’s resident startups, entrepreneurs and early-stage innovators. They offered exciting displays that shared their innovation journey with an engaged high-level audience of local decision makers.
In their own words, here’s who the 5 are:
Loop Hydrometallurgy
“Loop Hydrometallurgy seeks to revolutionise the production of copper and critical metals globally. Our breakthrough technology promises to substantially reduce both the global warming impact and the acid raid potential associated with the current dominant production processes. We call it ‘Copper Made Green’.
Every year, the world needs 300,000 tonnes of new copper production just to serve the growing markets for clean infrastructure, clean technology and clean transportation. The average electric vehicle uses four time more copper than older cars, nearly 100kg per vehicle.
The environmental advantages of these clean applications should be supported via the use of green copper sources. Our breakthrough technology is designed to maximise these environmental outcomes.
As the world is rapidly running out of clean, high grade copper resources, our technology also addresses the growing need for efficient and economical processing of lower grade, polymetallic, contaminated and recycled copper sources. As well as recovering rare earth elements, gold, PGMs and other critical metals as co-products, our technology could not only revolutionise the copper industry curve but create a strategic supply of critical metals domestically, entirely under Australian control.
Over the next three years, we will be conducting a commercialisation program at the Macquarie University Incubator, proving and scaling our technology to market readiness. This is designed to feed seamlessly into our first commercial project.”
Defy-Hi Robotics
“Safer, smarter façade inspection and defect visualisation platform for high-rise buildings.
We’re working on the inspector BEAR – a robot to autonomously capture data for façade inspections on tall city buildings where drones can’t fly. Once the data is collected, we create a digital twin of the building, and use our AI platform to analyse the data. This gives the property owners a central platform to accesss their data and manage their contractors. Globally, façade inspection is around US$12bn. We have partners such as CBRE, JLL, Charter Hall, Brookfield and ISPT. We have signed MOUs with façade engineering companies. And we have a MVP ready to use.
Key facts:
> 1,000,000 buildings globally are over 3 storeys
> Facade remediation estimates are often out by 10x due to incomplete data
> Most facade reports are 80% incomplete
Visit defyhi.com for more info”
Senoptix
“Ovarian cancer is a challenging disease to diagnose, often detected at advanced stages with a high recurrence rate. This is in part due to the symptoms - such as back pain and bloating - which are generic and nonspecific. In Australia alone, 1000 women lost their lives to ovarian cancer in 2022. The current blood test for ovarian cancer is limited, as it only detects one indicator that can also arise from other health conditions. There are other candidate indicators, but due to testing method complexities they are rarely identified.
Senoptix offers a promising solution—a benchtop point-of-care device that enables faster and more personalized treatment options for ovarian cancer patients. This innovative technology can monitor multiple indicators, allowing for early diagnosis and timely detection of recurrence. What sets Senoptix apart is its efficiency: the device is fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective, making it suitable for use by general practitioners in clinics and doctors in hospitals.
After originally considering an agricultural market, Senoptix pivoted their offering. The potential to address cancer and other health conditions became evident, aligning with the pressing need for improved diagnostic tools in healthcare.
With a proof of concept in place and extensive market research – 80 interviews and counting - Senoptix is poised to revolutionise ovarian cancer diagnosis and monitoring.”
Worn Up
“Worn Up’s vision is a waste-free world.
Conceived in 2016, Worn Up – through its Textile Rescue Pilot Program – has collected 100 tonnes of textiles destined for landfill, and plans to convert it all into new products.
After 2 years the Worn Up team developed prototype desks and stools made from their waste-baste composite called ‘FABtec’. The CSIRO Kickstart Team completed independent testing on FABtec, heralding it a ‘new generation composite’ with broad application, made entirely from non-useable uniforms and waste plastics.
Set for launch in 2024, FABtec has worked with pioneer clients such as IKEA, Coke Euro Partners, Crown Resorts, councils and schools that are ready to see the textiles converted to desks and tabletops that can be upcycled over and over again.”
Visit wornup.com for more info.
Spread
“Creating a new food system from scratch didn’t just require innovative thinking – it required us to ask: can we transform the entire domestic eating experience?
Existing food solutions leave every household unsatisfied because they do not understand the most important key to food choices: the people. We start by learning all about our customers. We create a profile and a weekly personalised cart for them. We ensure the shortest link between harvest and their plate, which means no distribution centres. We deliver their box along with meal suggestions for the week. No scrolling, no frantically walking down every aisle, no wondering about sustainability or seasonality, no feeling frustrated and bored with the foods available which lack in quality; that promise so much and deliver so little.
To transform the domestic eating experience, our answer was to develop our own farmer map so we could own our own logistics, our own food personality questionnaire so we could understand our customers more deeply than anyone else in the industry,
develop educational flashcards (what’s the good in buying produce if you don’t know what to do with it), an educational course without a single recipe (because we don’t believe in them) and finished with a completely new way to eat.”
