• A consortium of businesses in Australia are working together to make ventilators needed during the coronavirus pandemic.
• The group is led by Victorian-based company Grey Innovation, which secured $31.1 million from the federal government to make 2000 ventilators.
• Bosch Australia and New Zealand is one of the companies involved, developing test equipment for the ventilators.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s home page for more stories.

A group of Australian businesses are working together to produce ventilators needed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Victoria-based company Grey Innovation is leading the consortium of businesses under the ‘Notus Emergency Invasive Ventilator Program’.

The consortium includes engineering and manufacturing businesses across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia such as Bosch Australia and New Zealand, ANCA, Braemac, Hosico, Marand and Planet Innovation. Around 24 more businesses are yet to confirm their involvement.

Earlier in April, Grey Innovation secured $31.1 million from the federal government to build 2000 ventilators. It also received $500,000 from the Victorian government for its feasibility stage and an extra 2000 ventilators. On top of this, Grey Innovation has support from the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, a non-profit organisation which aims to make Australia’s manufacturing sector more competitive.

“Victoria’s high concentration of engineering and manufacturing companies means we’re well placed to develop the ventilators quickly, and Grey Innovation is proud to be leading the effort,” Grey Innovation Executive Chair Jefferson Harcourt said in a statement.

How the consortium began

Harcourt told Business Insider Australia the consortium began after he discussed with a fellow Grey Innovation board member what the company could do about Australia’s need for ventilators.

“I realised that every university and well-intentioned engineer will be coming up with a technical solution that might help and that was going to create a whole lot of noise for the government,” he said.

So instead of approaching the government with a solution as an individual, Harcourt believed a better approach was to get a consortium together and go as a group. “That’s essential because we need all the resources external to our business that we don’t have,” he explained. “We need to pull it together.”

Ventilators help patients severely impacted by the coronavirus by taking over the breathing process when their lungs start to fail.

Victoria’s hospitals have around 1000 ventilators with “thousands more” ordered from overseas, after the state government rolled out a $1.3 billion fund to purchase medical equipment like oxygen units, patient monitors, masks, gloves and gowns.

Grey Innovation provides licensing and commercialisation of IP services for tech companies. Harcourt explained that Grey Innovation has been in business for more than 20 years and has “a lot of friends” in the manufacturing industry. After he reached out them, Harcourt found many companies, from multinationals to family owned businesses, interested in joining and supporting the ventilator program. Some restaurants are even involved with catering.

“It was just that realisation that we can’t do it alone,” Harcourt said. “The message is so much better to [the] government when we do work as an industry.”

While it is mainly manufacturing and engineering companies involved, Harcourt said they are high tech industries. He said while some people may think of manufacturing in an “old-fashioned” sense, most of the businesses involved make precision components for the medical sector – and even, in some cases, fighter jets.

Creating the ventilators

The group aims to start supplying the ventilators in June 2020.

Under ventilator program, the consortium is using a certified ventilator design which it secured the license to produce in Victoria. “Because it’s certified already, it’s faster and more practical to get it through the regulator from our production facilities, because we only have to prove equivalence,” Harcourt said, rather than having to develop a ventilator from scratch.

The consortium is also building the testing infrastructure for the ventilators and dealing with the regulator – the Therapeutic Goods Association – so that there is a clear process in place for approval.

Bosch Australia and New Zealand secured $1 million for its role in the consortium, which Harcourt said would be used to fund the test equipment they’re providing.

The program is gaining interest from other countries

Harcourt added that the program is receiving inquiries from other countries including Indonesia and Malaysia. It is also speaking to other countries about supplying components or full ventilators to them as well.

“I think it’s very likely, if not certain, that we will be producing for foreign customers off the back of this consortium,” Harcourt said. He also sees more opportunities for the program in the future.

“Beyond the ventilator, it leaves us in a very good position to be first in line when the government looks to home-source key medical equipment, which they’ve indicated they will do and so we’re in a good position to respond to that call,” he said. “The idea is it’s not just a one-hit wonder, but we create something sustainable with this.”

Harcourt believes the program has brought companies together to “do something good” and also raise awareness of how critical manufacturing is, especially now. Plus, the group is even making a documentary about it as they go to show how the products come together.

“Manufacturing can be far more amazing than people realise,” he said. “If you’re making a rocket and launching that, you can’t tell me that’s not one of the most exciting things in the world to see.

“We want to make Australia make again and we plan to make a lot of noise to make that happen.”

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