Tonsley Innovators Connect

It’s been a big couple of years at Tonsley Innovation District so there was plenty of news to share at the first Tonsley Connections community networking event since the pandemic.

Tonsley Innovation District held its first major networking event since the pandemic on the 16th of November, bringing together industry, trade, research institutes and government that makes up the Tonsley community.

The event was attended by 150 crowd of workers, students, entrepreneurs and business leaders who joined in welcoming new businesses into the district and hear about what is coming next. The event also marked the first day of Future Energy Week and participants from this event joined as well. Future Energy Week participation was sponsored by CleanPeak Energy,

Our Precinct Director Philipp Dautel welcomed a long list of new businesses that have made Tonsley Innovation District home in the last 20 months and also those who will be moving into buildings currently being built on site and next stage releases of commercial land.

Some updates discussed included:

• The new Flinders train line and new Tonsley and Flinders Railway Stations are open
• Construction of a new wetland and greenway on the south western portion of Tonsley was completed in October
• Tonsley Village keeps growing, at 350 residents to date and around 1,800 in the next couple of years, sales centre has relocated
• Boiler House announcement imminent
• Rockwell Automation joined Tonsley
• New service core near TAFE entrance opens up development opportunities for the last stage of the Main Assembly Building (MAB) as  development the southern section including the development of new and last of the 4 Tonsley Forests begins
• Line Zero Building: Factory of the Future keeps growing with BAE Systems/ Flinders University, and Tesla now the anchor tenants
• Ziptrak’s new building has completed and Ziptrack will be hosting a tour of their new facilities in 2022 at Tonsley Connects event
• Autism SA moved to Tonsley and their premises will be featured at the next Tonsley Connections in early 2022
• Tonsley’s First Hotel development has commenced construction and is due for completion on 22nd August 2022. It will be operated by South Australia based La Loft Apartments and will comprise of 88 suites for short stays and 17 serviced apartments for extended stays, as well as conferencing facilities, function and office space, a gymnasium, café, bar and restaurant
• Mitsubishi has fully vacated Tonsley but new tenants such as Kuzer Technical, FormCut, and RoboRoos (Student Robotics Club of South Australia) have moved into the Administration Building
• Western Air becomes the first private business to set up offices at the South Australia Drill Core Reference Library – very unique opportunity for industry to co-locate with a Government-run facility. For more than 40 years, Western Air has pioneered portable air compressor units for drilling rigs, which are essential for the exploration of minerals, oil and gas, both locally and internationally
• New construction happening with Nice Automation – leader in smart home automation, controlling things in your home to managing security on military and Government sites like Embassies – to be completed around February next year
• Hydrogen Park SA (HyP SA) in Tonsley, one of the first renewable hydrogen plants in Australia, has started supplying zero-emissions gas to be blended into the mains gas network. Since April, around 700 homes in the Adelaide suburb of Mitchell Park will receive mains gas with a 5 per cent hydrogen mix, a precursor to AGIG introducing 10% renewable hydrogen by 2030 into its Australia-wide network which provides more than 2 million customers with natural gas. HyP SA is developed by Australian Gas Networks (part of the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG).
• New development behind Siemens Energy building with multi-tenanted facility including Accurate Dosing Systems – opening the door for Tonsley to enter the world of the flavour and fragrance industry
• Tonsley Innovation District won the “Innovation in Development Award” at the recent UDIA SA industry awards night
• Flinders University’s self-driving shuttle bus named ‘FLEX’ will be resuming its service soon after taking a break as a precautionary measure to the community and operators during the COVID-19 pandemic

We also celebrated the launching of Tonsley Future Energy Week last Tuesday. It is a jampacked 5-day event and led by the Tonsley Future Energy Consortium, a group of leaders from Tonsley Businesses.

Quentin Roberts, the Head of the Consortium, spoke about how the Tonsley triple helix model that encourages collaboration and innovation led to the consortium being founded and the Future Energy Week being launched, bringing experts from everywhere including the World Energy Council.

Our next Tonsley Connections will be in March 2022. To stay up to date, follow us on social (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) or subscribe to our newsletter.

If your business is interested in sponsoring the event, providing a tour of your facilities or speaking at the event contact Tonsley’s Marketing Manager, Jin Singh.