According to The Australian Financial Review, Sydney-based biotech EnGeneIC is tapping investors to raise $20 million in bridging funding to buy time until the IPO market reopens and the company can undertake a Nasdaq listing next year.
The company, which was founded in 2001 by former CSIRO scientists Jennifer MacDiarmid and Himanshu Brahmbhatt, who still serve as co-CEOs, has created a new way of delivering cancer drugs that is more potent and less toxic than existing treatments.

https://www.afr.com/companies/healthcare-and-fitness/cancer-biotech-raising-20m-after-delaying-nasdaq-float-20221111-p5bxgo

According to The Australian Financial Review, auction volumes jumped 4.4 per cent to 2266 nationwide this week – the biggest auction weekend since late June, as vendors rushed to sell ahead of the Christmas holiday period, data from CoreLogic shows.
Melbourne hosted the busiest auction market last week with 981 auctions, up by 4.6 per cent from a week ago, although still 59.2 per cent lower than the same time last year.
Of the collected results, 65.5 per cent were successful, up by 3.2 percentage points from last week.
Sydney’s clearance rate also rebounded to 67.5 per cent from a week ago amid early signs of confidence slowly returning into the market.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/clearance-rates-rebound-despite-higher-volumes-20221120-p5bzp6
​

According to The Nikkei Asia, Japan welcomed nearly 500,000 visitors from abroad in October, more than double the figure in September, after the country fully opened its borders last month.
Figures released by the Japan National Tourism Organization -- the first since the government restored visa-free entry for individual travelers on 11 Oct -- show 498,600 visitors entered the country, up from 206,500 in September.
Still, Japan has a long way to go to revive an industry that saw nearly 2.5 million arrivals in October 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Travel-Leisure/Japan-visitors-doubled-to-500-000-in-October-after-full-reopening

 

According to The Australian Financial Review, an army of householders in the suburbs of Adelaide helped stabilise a creaking electricity grid in South Australia.
Their residential storage batteries on the outside walls of homes with rooftop solar panels are part of a “virtual power plant” set up by AGL Energy six years ago, and were utilised by authorities to help stop the local grid overloading with too much electricity.

https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/hundreds-of-home-batteries-helped-stabilise-grid-agl-20221117-p5bz1g

According to The Asahi Shimbun, Japanese trading and other companies outside the manufacturing sector benefitted enormously from the steep fall in the value of the Japanese currency in recent months, whereas the performance of manufacturers was patchy due to a surge in prices of materials caused by the cheaper yen.
But overall, bottom-line profits posted by Japanese companies listed in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange before the regrouping of the TSE this spring, are projected to be a record for any six-month period, according to SMBC Nikko Securities Inc.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14764902
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, he’s only 26, but Melbourne-based entrepreneur Jordan Shreeve has created a multimillion-dollar packaging platform called Inke and signed up some of the world’s biggest brands, including Google, Microsoft and Uber.
Founded less than four years ago from his bedroom in the beachside suburb of Hampton with $20,000 of his own money, Inke enables companies to source branded packaging simply, regardless of the order size.
As well as big global tech companies, local brands including Mecca, Lululemon and Cotton On Group use the platform.
The brands can upload their own packaging design, or find a designer via 99designs, and select from a range of packages, or custom make their own. The platform connects customers with a local manufacturer and is designed to support smaller orders, but for companies wanting more than 3000 packages at a time, the Inke team manually facilitate the order.

https://www.afr.com/technology/how-a-26-year-old-turned-20k-into-a-multimillion-dollar-start-up-20221018-p5bqn3

According to The Australian Financial Review, more than 1400 people have moved out of the federal government’s First Home Loan Deposit Scheme by refinancing their dwelling with a standard commercial mortgage, in a sign that the program is already playing a role in accelerating the transition into home ownership.
With more than 40,000 home-deposit guarantees issued, the number of people moving off the scheme is small but indicates that even after 2 ½ years, the program is making a difference.
The third report into the operation of the scheme, which generally allows buyers to purchase a home with only a 5 per cent deposit – the remaining 15 per cent of which is guaranteed by the government – also shows an increase in the number of younger buyers, with people in the 18-24 age range rising to 18 per cent of all guarantees in the year to June from 12 per cent in FY21.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/home-owners-drop-scheme-that-helped-them-buy-a-house-20221103-p5bv7z

 

According to The Australian Financial Review, the head in Australia of trading giant Mitsui has come out strongly in support of the development of Woodside Energy’s massive Browse LNG project in Western Australia, saying Japan will need LNG from Australia for decades to come as well as new clean fuels such as low-carbon ammonia and hydrogen.
In his only interview since taking up the role of chairman and CEO of Mitsui Australia on April 1, Masato Sugahara said the Japanese firm is also keen to stay a minority partner in the Woodside-led North West Shelf venture and will continue to look for opportunities for new LNG investments here.
“Looking at Japan’s energy resources breakdown, LNG is going to be still an important resource out to 2050, but we need to think about methods to minimise greenhouse gas emissions by CCS (carbon capture and storage) or other technological solutions,” Mr Sugahara told The Australian Financial Review.

https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/mitsui-backs-browse-lng-and-wants-green-hydrogen-too-20221024-p5bs9h

 

According to The Australian Financial Review, in the battle to supply the carbon-neutral aviation fuel of the future, American entrepreneur Karl Seck reckons Queensland’s sugar cane industry has one big advantage over the vast cornfields of North America.
“The one really good thing about bagasse [sugar cane waste] is it is already aggregated,” he told the Tech Zero podcast when discussing the potential to turn crops into fuels.
Mercurius Biorefining wants to become a supplier to the industry, and Seck jokes to Tech Zero that his company might become “the Exxon of biofuels”.

https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/why-australian-sugar-cane-could-be-the-jet-fuel-of-the-future-20221031-p5buag

According to The Australian Financial Review, a broad-based accord signed between Woodside Energy and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation on energy security and decarbonisation has raised expectations that Japanese buyers may sign up to support the Australian company’s $16.5 billion Scarborough LNG project.
Under the deal, which was signed in Tokyo on Tuesday by Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill and JBIC deputy governor Kazuhiko Amakawa, the partners will work together to identify potential projects where Woodside may be able to work with Japanese companies in LNG supply and on lower-carbon energy products.

https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/woodside-s-japan-accord-fuels-scarborough-deal-hopes-20221102-p5buwr