Queensland Targeting Growth In Aerospace Manufacturing And Services

BRISBANE, Australia—Queensland is positioning itself as a hub for defense manufacturing and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capability.

The state has deployed its AU$180.6 million ($123.71 million) Sovereign Industry Development Fund to back projects ranging from rocket testing to refinishing for military aircraft. The fund has drawn 250 applications proposing AU$2 billion in financing, with defense, biomedicine and biofuel projects named as the top three growth priorities, Queensland’s deputy premier told Aviation Week’s MRO Australasia here.

“We want to secure Queensland’s sovereign capability, capacity and manufacturing,” said Jarrod Bleijie, who in addition to being deputy premier is his state’s minister of development, infrastructure and planning, and minister for industrial relations. Queensland is “home to 26% of the nation’s aerospace businesses,” he said, but it is actively trying to increase that, especially for defense and manufacturing capabilities.

When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the world and “people started to look into their own backyards,” the question many Queenslanders and Australians asked was, “Why are we not doing things in our own country anymore?” said the deputy premier.

To develop its three priorities, the state launched the Sovereign Industry Development Fund to provide funding for infrastructure and manufacturing. Of the AU$180.6 million in this fund, “the aviation industry has done well,” Bleijie said.

Two weeks ago, the state awarded Lockheed Martin AU$6.38 million to support the development of mobile rocket test and evaluation capability, he said. Lockheed is partnering with the University of Queensland, Airways Trade Australia and Rocket Technologies.

Another AU$31.64 million of the fund went to HeliMods at the Caloundra Aerodrome on the Sunshine Coast to deliver a purpose-built defense-grade facility to support its end-to-end aerospace and manufacturing capability, from systems design to install and life-cycle support.

The defense-focused capabilities will build off of HeliMods’ range of civil and government helicopter services, including emergency medical and search and rescue. The government projects it will cost AU$78.1 million to build the 10,000-m² (107,600-ft.²) facility, and it will create 250 jobs, the deputy premier said.

One of the fund’s first tenders went to Black Sky Aerospace to build a weapons test and evaluation center on more than 1 million acres of barren land at Thargomindah. Once that site is operational, it will provide domestic and allied users a place to “blow things up without neighbors worrying about it,” Bleijie said.

U.S. aircraft refinisher Landlocked Aviation received AU$12 million to “develop a 7,685-m² defense-grade refinishing and maintenance facility at the Wellcamp Airport,” he said. The project will cost a total of AU$52 million and allow defense aircraft such as the C-17 Globemaster to be painted in Australia, instead of being refinished in Asia or the U.S., Bleijie said.

Boeing, which was not part of the sovereign funding, is moving the assembly of its MQ-28 Ghost Bat uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV) from Melbourne in southeastern Australia to Wellcamp Airport by year-end. “Boeing will be able to take their Ghost Bat and have it painted” there, which is also part of the Wellcamp Aerospace and Defense Precinct, Bleijie added.

Queensland state-sponsored training organization Aviation Australia received AU$3 million to establish the Townsville Aviation Center of Excellence. It will train defense aviation maintenance engineers there with high-tech simulation equipment.

Applications for the first round of grants closed on Feb. 27, but, Bleijie said, “We would love to continue Sovereign Industry Development Fund grants in the future.” He’s in discussions with the state premier and treasurer to do so, he added.

“When a program is oversubscribed by AU$1.8 billion, it shows there’s support for it but, more importantly, there’s a need for it,” he said. “We’re getting behind your [aerospace] industry.”