Archive for category: EVENT REVIEW

With much of the world still struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic, economic activity has fallen drastically, foreshadowing the most severe recession in nearly a century. As part of the post-COVID-19 recovery, countries are now focusing on measures that can drive sustainability while boosting jobs, income and growth and accelerating climate action.

It was no surprise then that this was the topic chosen for the second ABIE Network Business Leaders Roundtable held on the 18 March 2021 and titled “Opportunities for a sustainability-driven recovery: Perspectives between Australia and Europe”.

The three speakers, Romain Desrousseaux, Deputy CEO of Neoen; Jeff Connolly, Chairman and CEO of Siemens Australia Pacific and Roland Schmidt, MD of Macquarie Capital, representing the financial services, industrial infrastructure and power sectors, are all members of the ABIE network. Nicola Watkinson, MD of International Trade and Investment at TheCityUK and former Austrade Senior Trade Commissioner for Western Europe, joined from the UK to moderate the round table.

Roland Schmidt opened the discussion with an introduction to Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG), a primary vehicle for principal investment in green energy projects, and home to one of the world’s largest teams of green energy investment specialists. The group has already committed and arranged £20+ bn to support green energy projects around the world.

As countries turn towards renewable energy to reduce their carbon footprint in order to reach the goals of the Paris agreement, companies like Neoen, France’s leading independent producer of renewable energy, play a key role in this transition. Romain Desrousseaux pointed out that in 2020 despite the COVID-19 crisis, Neoen had a turnover of €300 million and now operates 4 GW of assets in 15 countries.

Siemens is also working towards becoming the world’s first major industrial company to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint by 2030 and have already reduced their carbon footprint by 54% and ahead of schedule. Jeff Connolly explained that Siemens hopes to drive sustainability through the areas of intelligent infrastructure, industry 4.0 and the future of energy – everything from smart infrastructure delivering energy efficiency upgrades for commercial buildings through to automation and digitalisation in industrial plants and even enabling green hydrogen from renewables.

Green hydrogen was a recurring topic discussed by the three speakers with Roland Schmidt describing it as “the next big thing” with countries like Australia and Germany playing a key role in establishing a global hydrogen market.

On whether Australia is a good place to invest in renewable energy, Romain Desrousseaux indicated that Australia has a great macro environment for renewable energy “with both wind and sun in the same location” as well as “plenty of land to build large assets”. He also mentioned certain difficulties faced including the complexity of organising and connecting an asset within the expansive Australian electricity network and meeting local specificities. This has not put Neoen off from investing more than AUD3 billion in projects around Australia since its presence in 2012 including the Hornsdale Power Reserve and a new Victorian Big Battery which will become one of the largest batteries in the world.

In regards to the accelerated digitalisation due to the COVID-19 crisis and the various opportunities for future growth and sustainability, Jeff Connolly said that there are many elements to it and “it’s about better use of resources”. Wolf of the Willows craft brewery for instance reduced their brew time from 25 to 18 days. He also highlighted Hydrogen Park in South Australia which uses Siemens technology to produce green hydrogen from excess rooftop solar to inject into the gas network as well as to ship to industrial customers around Australia. He also believes that there is a confidence issue which is holding some companies back from reaching their sustainability goals and which needs to be addressed. In particular, there needs to be an incentive on the demand side to take up business risk and work on R&D.

The circular economy is also a hot topic in Australia at the moment, with state and federal governments investing in circular economy innovation projects.

The exchange ended with valuable insights into whether we are seeing a genuine change of global mindset regarding government attitudes to sustainability and climate change and whether this would create winner and loser markets. “There is a shift in mindset on green energy and green economy, but it’s also a matter of affordability”, said Roland Schmidt. “There is a transition globally, but some countries around the globe will need help to be able to participate in the transition.”

In his closing remarks and vote of thanks, Richard York, the current Chair of the ABIE Group, which comprises 17 organisations in Europe and Australia, hoped that initiatives like this annual ABIE Business Leaders Roundtable would help to build trust and understanding between companies in Australia and Europe.

The Australia-United Kingdom Chamber of Commerce invited members to their virtual event: A 2021 Toast to Australia: Aussie Wine Tasting and Networking on the 3rd of February, 2021. Representatives of various ABIE Groups across Europe were also invited to participate to broaden the networking across borders. Eberhard Goihl, GABC treasurer, attended as the German flag-bearer.

The wines were delivered to participants beforehand, so everybody could smell, taste and drink the products as Mark Flounders from Plonk Wines Ltd. introduced three different wines and shared a lot of insider information. Despite the European guests experiencing their first contact with the new Brexit regulations (the wine delivery was delayed in Customs due to declaration requirements), everybody enjoyed the session and networking opportunities very much.

On Wednesday, the 13th of January, the German Australian Business Council and the Irish Business Network (IBN) Germany welcomed almost 70 participants for our first joint event of 2021 “Three Sides of a Coin: fresh perspectives for 2021 from Germany, Ireland and Australia”. The event featured speakers John Lynam, Consul General of Ireland, Frankfurt; Simon Clayton, Deputy Head of Mission, Australian Embassy- Berlin; Volkmar Klein, MdB, Member of German Parliament and was moderated by Eric Menges, Managing Director, FrankfurtRheinMain GmbH.

John shared the positive benefits of BREXIT for Ireland, such as accelerated plans to open 25 new missions globally by 2025 and strong investment in key sectors like life sciences and clean tech. Germany is also Ireland’s largest trading partner in the EU and a closer trading relationship and volume is expected once the initial teething issues are sorted.

Simon spoke about new business perspectives particularly in hydrogen. He also highlighted advantages of the AU-EU FTA which is currently being negotiated and which would ideally lead to more EU investment in Australia with positive implications for the global supply chain and logistics.

Volkmar rounded off the discussion highlighting Germany’s three pillars of COVID response around supporting businesses, stabilizing the economy and investing in the future (specifically in industries such as green steel and in developing countries which will be impacted disproportionately by this crisis).

A lively Q&A punctuated by bits of humour and positivity rounded off the rest of the evening’s discussion.

We thank IBN Germany for their cooperation and John, Simon, Volkmar and Eric for a very engaging and insightful evening.

Please kindly contact our office for access to the recording.

On Wednesday 4 November, we had the pleasure of hosting an online event with our member Dr Mohit Chhaya, co-founder and CEO of BellaSeno GmbH. BellaSeno is an award- winning ISO 13485-certified clinical-stage MedTech company developing innovative 3D-printed, resorbable implants for soft tissue reconstruction, with a particular emphasis on breast reconstruction.

Dr Chhaya shared his journey starting with his PhD research on tissue engineering in Australia back in 2011 where Australia’s interdisciplinary research approach and its core research facilities concept were integral in fast-tracking his research development. The PhD followed with a 2014 Fellow Scholarship sponsored by the Universities Australia and German Academic Exchange Service (or DAAD), which allowed Dr Chhaya to establish a direct collaboration with plastic surgeons at the University Hospital in Munich. This experience allowed him to assess the practical application of his research which led him to pivot to a new clinical technique.

With proof of concept and commercial feasibility, Dr Chhaya was then able to exclusively license the technology from QUT in Australia and TU Munich in Germany to start the company, With support from German angel investor and bioentrepreneur Dr Herbert Stadler and the State Development Bank of Saxony, BellaSeno was founded in Leipzig in 2017.

Since then, BellaSeno has gone on to further finetune their scaffold for surgical practicality, develop their medical addictive and device manufacturing capabilities in Germany for certification and more recently, conduct their first human clinical study in Brisbane. Looking ahead, Dr Chhaya shared that BellaSeno will be expanding its clinical trials over the next two years before going-to-market in 2024/2025.

For those that missed the session, a recording is available here (Password f66+20L?).

On Tuesday September, 29 2020, we had the pleasure of hosting an online event with our member Dr. Tania Peitzker and her AI Bot hologram “Birgit am Bodensee / Kylie from Sydney” who were attending live from Lindau.

Tania gave us exceptional insights into the world of artificial intelligence, specifically bots and holograms and their different application areas ranging from governments and public services to retailers, manufacturers, city wayfinding, touchless banking and vending services.

Tania touched on the technology and guiding principles behind the holograms’ development and learning. She also highlighted the importance of engaging the community and educating users on how best to interact with the holograms.

Tania predicts that voice-driven and touchless interfaces will become the norm in our new digital economies and cities of the future as we will see more of these cognitive interfaces and avatars being ever-present in our daily lives.

As a special feature on the lively Q&A session, participants also got a chance to see Birgit and Kylie interacting live with Tania.

For those who missed the session, the full video recording can be accessed here and a link to Tania’s presentation is available here.

For those interested in interacting with her (2D) bots live, please visit her website.

Thank you to all participants for joining us!