The AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies list, published on Friday, has revealed the top innovators in 10 categories — agriculture, mining and utility; banking, superannuation and financial services; government, education and not-for-profit; health industries; manufacturing and consumer goods; media & marketing; property, construction & transport; professional services; retail, hospitality, tourism & entertainment; and technology. Each category has a prize-winning innovator. Apart from these 10 category winners, there are six special innovation prizes for best product; best service; best marketing; best internal innovation; best innovation program; and best CSR innovation. The overall best innovator, the top prize, this year has been won by Nano Digital Home Loans.
These are the 2022 AFR BOSS top 10 innovative companies in the manufacturing and consumers goods category:
Innovation: Vitruvian Trainer+
Staff: 20-99 employees
An adaptive training device, Vitruvian uses technology developed in Australia.
A powerful adaptive strength trainer for athletes at all stages of their fitness journey, the compact Vitruvian Trainer+, along with its app, uses artificial intelligence, powerful motors and retractable cables to adjust the optimal digital weight and resistance to users in real time.
The 40kg Vitruvian Trainer+ allows anyone aged 15+ to weight train safely and efficiently from home.
Innovation: Ryco racing filters
Staff: 20-99 employees
Alastair Hampton, Ryco’s general manager of engineering, says the company’s filtration technology reduces costs for racing and high-performance vehicles by substantially lowering engine wear.
“This also increases engine efficiency over the life of the vehicle and reduces resource consumption,” he says.
Stuart Chandler and Alastair Hampton with Ryco filters.
And although the technology was developed on racing vehicles, it also has applications in other engines as well as applications beyond internal combustion.
Ryco is extending beyond traditional automotive markets.
“The filtration technologies being developed in our labs can be applied in future mobility applications as well as new, expanding fields such as air quality,” Hampton says.
Innovation: Great Wrap – compostable stretch wrap
Staff: 20-99 employees
Great Wrap’s compostable stretch wrap is an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional plastic food wrap that uses renewable plant-based carbon from food waste which is home compostable in under 180 days.
Great Wrap has the potential to completely replace conventional plastic wrap and in doing so, diverts food waste from landfill into compost where the composting process aids the nutrient cycle by returning carbon and nutrients to the soil.
Innovation: The InQuik Bridging System
Staff: 20-99 employees
The InQuik Bridge system is a prefabricated modular bridge technology that aims to make concrete bridge construction quicker, simpler and safer, while targeting a long design life with little need for maintenance.
The system uses modular panels which are made in a factory and transported to site, where they are placed in position and filled with concrete.
According to chief executive Ben Mullaney, the company is already revolutionising the way concrete bridges are made and has now set its sights on global expansion, setting up a new business in the United States.
He says they’re not confined to bridges and “wherever there’s a concrete structure globally, you could use our self-supporting technology to improve the construction process and structural quality”.
Innovation: Ultima IQ LED 40″ Lightbar
Staff: 100-499 employees
Brown & Watson International’s group general manager (product) Ryan Elsegood says the company’s innovation journey began with a light bulb moment, “when we started importing lights from Europe to Australia”.
“We’ve come a long way since then and have built our own capabilities to design and develop lighting solutions,” Elsegood says.
The company’s Ultima IQ LED 40″ driving light is a combination of high-powered LED driving light bars with an integrated in-cabin lighting controller. It produces an optimised beam intensity and shape to suit one of three pre-set terrains, reducing road sign flareback by up to 50 per cent, while maintaining maximum visibility.
Innovation: WaterWall
Staff: 20-99 employees
The Complete Home Filtration WaterWall is an Australian-designed water filtration system that attaches to the mains inlet water line into the home.
The WaterWall aims to remove up to 98.5 per cent of chlorine and chlorine by-products along with contaminants of emerging concern such as PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances used in products resisting heat, oil, stains and water) for end-consumers living in PFAS-affected areas, filtering down to 1 micron.
Innovation: Australia’s new circular plastics facility
Staff: 500+ employees
Pact Group’s vision is to lead the circular economy in Australia. The company’s Albury-Wodonga recycling facility can recycle up to 1 billion 600ml beverage bottles a year and turn them into high-quality food-grade resin for use in recycled bottles and food packaging, diverting thousands of tonnes of plastic waste from landfill per annum.
The new facility is the largest of its kind in Australasia and with Pact’s joint venture partners Cleanaway Waste Management, Asahi Beverages and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), they’ve now successfully developed a closed loop solution for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beverage bottles.
Innovation: Recycled Stabilised Sand
Staff: 100-499 employees
Repurpose It has manufactured recycled, stabilised sand using cement and 100 per cent recycled sand from excavation spoil destined for landfill.
Repurpose It applies recycling techniques to recover resources from waste.
Founder and CEO George Hatzimanolis is passionate about preserving the planet and realised early in the company’s journey that our waste such as timber or cement or rock, and even food scraps, is handy to reuse “yet nobody wants it”.
“It’s not garbage, it’s actually gold,” he says.
Innovation: Novel brewing techniques for low alcohol production
Staff: 20-99 employees
Brick Lane Brewing Co has pioneered novel brewing techniques to combat the difficulties associated with contaminating yeast strains causing unacceptably high alcohol levels.
Their brewing process uses a special type of carbohydrate-modified wort, which allows for the propagation of the special maltose-negative yeast strains in low and no-alcohol beer fermentation.
Innovation: Individual Malt Stream Process
Staff: 100-499 employees
Archie Rose’s company mission is to bring the highest quality Australian spirits, featuring ethically sourced local and native ingredients, to more people locally and around the world.
Archie Rose founder Will Edwards and master distiller Dave Withers.
The company’s Individual Malt Stream Process prevents the need to compromise whiskey quality when distilling disparate malts. The method processes one malt at a time, enabling Archie Rose to select optimal conditions for each malt to maximise whiskey quality.
According to the company, innovation has been a key value and motivator since day one, beginning with founder Will Edwards’ efforts to explore why Sydney didn’t have a working distillery, leading to the launch of Archie Rose in 2014.
The value of Australian local and native ingredients to the company’s products and business is reflected in the fact they now grow and sustainably source 100 per cent of the malts for the whiskies made in Australia.
It’s quite an entrepreneurial leap to go from co-founding a high-speed algorithmic trading company in the finance sector to setting up a fitness technology company but that’s exactly what Jon Gregory did back in 2010.
Vitruvian CEO Jon Gregory is keen to bring resistance training into the 21st century. Photo: Trevor Collens
Gregory says Vitruvian as an idea was born from working in his finance firm where they had a bunch of weights and a bench press in the trading room so the office could work on their fitness when the markets were quiet for a bit of fun and stress relief.
At the time he was perplexed as to why at one end of the office he was doing cutting edge algorithmic trading and high-speed computing while at the other end “we were just pushing metal around”.
He began to wonder how “we could bring resistance training and weight training into the 21st century” with a mix of technology as well as use his background in applied physics.
His goal was to build 21st century resistance training that’s interesting, engaging and adaptive.
So, after finishing his trading career in late 2010, he then spent the next eight years tinkering part-time in his shed to turn his concept into a reality.
The result was the first iteration of the Vitruvian Trainer, a smart resistance digital fitness trainer that adapts to the user’s ability and strength as they train.
From that first prototype, Gregory’s vision was to create a resistance training technology company and deliver that technology to people wherever they wanted to train.
He says the Vitruvian is now used in home gyms and studios as well as rehabilitation centres, elite training programmes and more. There are multiple markets, he says.
“We have machines all around the world and they’re even being used by people who are living in vans and driving around Europe but still want to do effective strength training as well as people who have put them in their private jets and work out at 30,000 feet.”
Now with a global team and having sold the Vitruvian Trainer into around 40 countries, Gregory’s goal is to keep innovating in the fitness space because “we can never stand still”.
“We’re not doing the easy thing. We’re not just digging stuff up or growing it. We are an Australian manufacturing company – a hardware and software technology company born and bred in Australia.
“And we’re using technology to lower the barriers to fitness,” he says.
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