Stärke Advanced Manufacturing Group (Stärke-AMG) and Flinders University will lead a $2.7 million, four-year project to build sovereign metal additive manufacturing capability in Australia, aimed at defense, maritime and medical components. Flinders will run three Renishaw AM400 systems to generate the material science data, qualification methods and alloy datasets behind that work. Adelaide University and Metal Powder Works join as materials and powder partners.
The project is funded through the Additive Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (AMCRC).
For Stärke-AMG, the goal is moving past prototyping into qualified production. CEO Al Jawhari said: “the opportunity is not in printing parts, it’s in qualified production.” He said defense and medical buyers need suppliers that can show repeatable components with full traceability and quality assurance.
Flinders research lead Professor Maziar Ramezani said Australia already has additive manufacturing expertise but lacks enough data on process reliability and qualification requirements to support wider industrial adoption. The project is meant to supply that research base.
AMCRC managing director Simon Marriott said Australia cannot build domestic manufacturing capability without the ability to qualify and produce critical components locally.
The consortium says it will deliver qualified manufacturing workflows and certification-ready datasets, plus production demonstrators to prove them out. No part numbers, specific alloys, or a start date beyond the four-year window have been published.
We’ve covered a similar effort in the US: the $12.4 million MIAMI program funded by America Makes to certify metal 3D-printed parts.