Boston Consulting Group estimates that biomanufacturing will displace 40 percent of the global economy over the next 30 years. This is equivalent to $30 trillion in global economic potential. Currently, Australia is on the wrong side of this global economic reality.

Australia has not grasped the scope of the biomanufacturing revolution underway. Almost everything in our industrial system relies on the petrochemical value chain. Biomanufacturing is Australia’s opportunity to benefit from the coming supply chain revolution.

Biomanufacturing opens up sovereign options for growing any biologically derived material, chemical or compound using domestic agricultural and forestry feedstocks. It is one of the few emerging technologies that Australia has an intrinsic capacity in which to be the global leader. Yet, government support is severely lacking.

The US Department of Defense established BioMADE in October 2020, a billion-dollar public-private partnership to expand the American bioeconomy. The initiative is part of a larger project of ‘bold goals for US biotechnology and biomanufacturing’ that will direct tens of billions of dollars of US government funding to the sector. China also intends to spend billions of dollars on biomanufacturing through its five-year bioeconomy plan. India has its equivalent BioE3 program and Japan recently announced its biomanufacturing revolution fund. Britain also announced its engineering biology strategy late last year.

Australia simply has no equivalent.

Consider one example of the technology’s potential. Synthetic rubber cannot be used in aircraft tyres because the heat on landing leads to combustion. In 2023 BioMADE started a project with Goodyear and the US Air Force looking at transforming dandelions into a natural rubber through biomanufacturing. At present, though, the US Air Force’s rubber almost exclusively comes from plantations outside the US, in countries such as Brazil. This outsourcing presents a supply chain vulnerability begging for a biomanufacturing solution.

Australia has abundance of feedstock, and regional communities recognise the potential of biomanufacturing. The opportunity now exists for building advanced technology industries in the bush, providing jobs for farmers and advanced manufacturing work in the regions. It would see the development of a sovereign critical technology supply chain distributed across the continent and concentrated around sites of agricultural, forestry and aquacultural biomass. Imagination really is the limit.

Bioenergy Australia, the Jet Zero Council and Biofutures Queensland can all speak to the value of Australia having a sovereign sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel sector. Yet some of the key roadblocks are the lack of large offtake agreements that ensure new infrastructure builds have commercial feasibility. An Australian equivalent to BioMADE could negotiate national offtake agreements for the air force and the navy to place a strong market signal on the table. This would ensure that major energy companies invest in Australia and build the renewable fuel infrastructure the country needs.

Yet agriwaste-to-jetfuel is the least interesting possibility that biomanufacturing presents. Airbus is in partnership with AMSilk, a German company that makes spider silk composites stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar and more flexible and shock resistant than carbon fiber. Oh, and it’s also fully biodegradable; the planes of the future may be made of recyclable silk.

Australia has national expertise in the underpinning science and technologies, with more than 250 scientists concentrated in the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence in Synthetic Biology. We have abundant biomass and high-quality logistic networks for moving it across the continent. We have a large fermentation workforce and a driving need to revitalise regional areas through advanced technology industries that are enduringly sustainable.

Despite these strengths, Australia is missing several necessary features. We must develop de-risked investment pathways for first-of-a-kind manufacturing facilities and apprenticeship training pathways for the bioprocessing engineers of tomorrow. We are also yet to receive a clear indication from the Australian government that it understands real advanced manufacturing means being able to grow energetics, fuels, materials and chemicals at home.

An Australian BioMADE would bring the disparate strands of federal, state and local government together that are each so critical in developing and implementing an Australian biomanufacturing roadmap aligned with Defence needs and priorities.

These new technologies do not require sunlight to function, so they can be deployed nearly anywhere. Think of alternative protein on a submarine, sustainable aviation fuel fermentation deep beneath the Snowy Hydro or more simply, a way to domestically produce the nation’s most imported chemicals and energetics.

Creating an Australian BioMADE as a joint enterprise between the Department of Defence, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources and the Department of Agriculture is needed now. Otherwise, Australia will be locked into exporting canola to Europe to be turned into fuel that should have been manufactured at home. It’s time we stop sending our scientists overseas to start companies that couldn’t find funding or a welcoming regulatory environment in Australia. We need to grow our advanced biomanufacturing capacity on this continent. An Australian BioMADE paired with an Australian biomanufacturing roadmap will make that happen.