Press conference, Adelaide

TONY ZAPPIA: Well, good morning. Can I say it is terrific to be here at Tindo Solar with Glenn and Richard and the Tindo team, and with Minister Chris Bowen who I will hand over to in just a moment. But before I do, can I just make a couple of very brief remarks. Tindo Solar is a local success story. I have followed it from the day it was established here at Mawson Lakes. But it's more than just a local success story. It is a business that is contributing to two of our key visions as a nation.

Firstly, to rebuild our manufacturing base and Tindo is proving that we can compete with the rest of the world. Secondly, as you all know, we need to transition to renewable energy. Again, Tindo is playing its role in helping us as a nation transition to renewable energy and meet our 2050 target of net zero. With that, I will hand over to Chris.

BOWEN: Thanks, Zap, it's great to be here in your electorate. You're a very big supporter of Tindo and you're a very big supporter of Australian manufacturing and you're a wonderful Member of Parliament and it's a great day. You know, we've been talking for a long time about a future made in Australia and today is the next step along that journey. Tindo, a great Australian company, Australian owned and Australian operated, our only manufacturer of solar panels and the future for Tindo just got brighter.

We've been working with ARENA and with Tindo on making this important investment which will see Tindo's manufacturing capacity here increase by nine times, from 20 megawatts to 180 megawatts, and enough capacity to deal with 35,000 Australian houses, putting solar panels on the roof every year. Now, to give you some idea of the scale, around so far 300,000 Australian houses have put solar panels on the roof every year. So, this will give Tindo the opportunity to cater for around 10 per cent of our domestic demand. And what we're going to do is work with Tindo through the Solar Sunshot Program Production Credit to ensure that their success is rewarded. We're also going to work with Tindo on the next stage. Funding a feasibility study on the next big play for Australian solar panel manufacturing, which will be a factory here which will cater for a gigawatt's worth of production, a gigafactory, for Australian made solar panels. So Australian made solar panels have a very important role to play in our future. We've put one per cent of solar panels that were put on our roof in Australia have been made in Australia. That's not good enough. Not good enough for the Prime Minister, not good enough for me, not good enough for the country or the government. We want to do much better. We have a lot more to do.

Australians are embracing this revolution every single day. Yesterday 1,000 Australians put a battery in their home. Today 1,000 Australians will put a battery in their home under our Cheaper Home Batteries policy. South Australia has taken that policy up more than - with more keenness than anybody else, but it's being embraced right across the country. But that's part of the journey. Some of those people with more keenness than anybody else, but it's being embraced right across the country. But that's part of the journey. Some of those people didn't have solar panels and they're putting solar panels in and a battery at the same time. Others already had solar panels. Some of them will have put more solar panels on when they look at how they can make their system work best in their own best interest, putting themselves in charge of their energy needs, deciding when they'll produce and consume and save and sell electricity.

That's what we want to give more Australians the chance to do. So, 50 new jobs coming to this facility. We said at the election we'd deliver a Future Made in Australia. It's not easy. It doesn't happen overnight, but step by step we're building through Solar Sunshot, through the other initiatives under the Future Made in Australia package. I want to thank Richard and Glenn and their teams for working with Darren and his team. We don't make these investments lightly, as I'm sure Richard and Glenn would be the first to attest.

ARENA puts people through their paces, as they should. This is government supported. It doesn't come lightly. We've got to be very satisfied it's going to be well spent, and we are very satisfied that you'll spend it well. So, I'm proud as Minister, I'm proud as a Tindo customer to say this is a good day for Tindo, a good day for jobs, a good day for Adelaide, a good day for South Australia, a good day for Australia. Now let's go and do it. I'm just going to ask Darren to add to my remarks then Richard, and then we'll take questions. I'll be taking easy the questions, Mr Miller will be taking hard questions. Thank you.

JOURNALIST: Give your name and title, so the first and last name, and title, please, just for [indistinct] so everyone's got it when you're putting it up on TV.

DARREN MILLER: Darren Miller, the CEO of Arena, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Well, thank you, Minister. Terrific to be here today to announce the $34.5 million in funding to Tindo for this upgraded facility, both an upgrade in capacity as well as an upgrade in technology to make these panels more efficient.

Now, when the Solar Sunshot Program was first announced back in March last year, I immediately took a delegation to China to have a look at what the best in the world was in terms of manufacturing solar components. I came away incredibly impressed but also confident that this kind of thing could be done in Australia. And walking around the factory today and seeing the quality control and the impressive panels that are produced here, the high efficiency, I'm absolutely convinced that Australia can play right at the top of the game against the Chinese manufactured panels.

So, this is a great opportunity for Australia. The first of hopefully many. As the Minister said, 180 megawatts is a start, 10 per cent of the rooftop market here. But when you think about the renewable energy superpower vision and what that means, we're talking about possibly two billion panels required on Australian lands, on Australian roofs, between now and 2050. That's $200 billion of revenue for somebody in the market if we can make that come true.

Why won't we do that in Australia? Well, this is a great opportunity to do that. The billion-dollar Solar Sunshot Program looks to explore right up and down the supply chain. Modules are obviously right at the end of the line but we're also looking at mining, refining, poly silicon solar production, ingots, wafers: there's a whole supply chain to look after. This is the start of it. It's a really proud day. I want to thank everybody here for their hard work. I encourage you to get going and look forward to the next phase, the study and the possible bigger facility. Thank you.

RICHARD PETTERSON: My name's Richard Petterson, I'm the CEO of Tindo Solar. First of all, I'd just like to thank the Minister and ARENA for the Sunshot Program and, of course, Tindo has been successful with that, and we're very appreciative of the support and the funding of over $34 million for the project over the next seven years.

It means a significant step up for Tindo, and what you'll see in the factory today versus even a few weeks ago when we started this project, there's a significant level of activity for producing the higher rates. And what that does for us is enables the additional 50 jobs we talked about. It increases our capacity and our ability to make higher value panels at a better price. What this actually means for us and for Australia is that Tindo will continue to make very high, high-quality panels in Australia, Australian made, and more Australians will have access to them.

What this does for us is it enables us to improve our position in the market. It increases our addressable market by about four times, which means four times as many Australians will be able to enjoy our products, and rest assured that they’re getting the best solar panel they can buy on their roofs made right here in Australia.

It also means that we can start working on our supply chain. We have partners we're already working with in Australia, to onshore as many suppliers as we can, and as we get to greater scale, we believe that will become much more economically feasible, and with the help of organisations like ARENA, understand where those opportunities are.

It also means that we continue to build the community around us that helps us deliver what we do including universities, other organisations that are doing lots of research and development, and partnerships that we've developed within the industry. So, by scaling, it enables Tindo to increase that activity. And last of all, the key outcome for us is that the support, the support of the government, it's a really important step that we see as essential in the Australian environment. We've decided Australia needs to be better at making things, and a future made in Australia for us is really important.

This initiative in itself is an important step for Tindo to reach its goal of developing a gigawatt factory and for that we're very thankful to the government and we're looking forward to some great news of future success.

JOURNALIST: This warehouse itself apparently holds about 5,000 panels according to one of your staff members.

RICHARD PETTERSON: Yep.

JOURNALIST: Now, with this next opportunity, what does the scale look like in terms of, you know, 5,000 in here now, what are we going to get to over a 12-month period? How – how big can this get for Tindo? This next opportunity, what does the scale look like in terms of, you know, 5,000 in here now, what are we going to get to over a 12-month period?

RICHARD PETTERSON: Yes, so our aim is to grow confidently over the next 12 months. We also have a distribution network. So, what you see here is a very small portion of what we manufacture. This is literally just the whole imposition before we distribute it to our third-party suppliers or 3PLs and we have a strong distributor partnership as well to hold our stock. So the idea is that as we grow, you'll see more of our product in the market actually available for purchase. And so, you won't see much change in here, you'll see more out in the market.

JOURNALIST: You've got the incentives already, but you've mentioned South Australia has a great uptake in solar but around the rest of the country it seems to lag a little bit. What more can be done in those areas to try and boost that to support Australian businesses?

BOWEN: Well, I wouldn't say the rest of the country is lagging. I mean, South Australia is a leader with its plan to get to 100 per cent renewables by 2027 and the take-up by South Australian households. As I said, cheaper home batteries, for example, is going well right around the country. It's just going even better in South Australia. The six top electorates for take-up of cheaper home batteries, five are in South Australia. That tells you that South Australians are embracing this transition.

What we can do to work, to ensure that South Australia continues to lead is exactly what we're doing. Now, here we are today making a big Solar Sunshot investment in South Australian manufacturing. It's our second one. This is the second recipient of Solar Sunshot funding. The first was 5B, also in Adelaide. So that tells you that there's something special happening in Adelaide and in South Australia. Now we want to continue to see that building and growing.

In terms of incentives that you go to around the country, as I said, 1,000 Australians are putting a cheaper home battery in every day. We're now 22,675 in a month and a week- one month and half a week, we've added 22,675 home batteries. That's more than the Hornsdale Big Battery in terms of capacity. The Hornsdale Big Battery took 100 days which was lightning speed, and we've had more than that in a month and a little bit. So, it's going well. We'll continue, obviously, to do what we need to do to help Australians with this transition, but this was no small investment, the Cheaper Home Batteries Policy. Solar Sunshot is no small investment. We're getting on with the job.

JOURNALIST: COP, the pitch to bring COP to Adelaide, and when you look at businesses like Tindo, how important is that to try and shine that light in the greater world of climate change? 

BOWEN: One of the reason’s we’ve chosen Adelaide to host COP31 should we be successful is because we want to tell the world a story. Adelaide, South Australia’s renewable energy was 1% in 2007, and it will be 100% by 2027, that’s a remarkable, remarkable transformation. It’s a credit to South Australia, it’s a credit to successive South Australian Governments, in particular the Malinauskas Government, but successive South Australian Governments. We want to show the world, yes we’re a fossil fuel economy, but we’re in transition, and we want to show them success, and success looks like Adelaide. So that’s great. And manufacturing is part of that story. As I said. Two solar manufacturing initiatives in the last couple of months, both in South Australia. They can’t all be in South Australia, sorry Tony, but so far, 100 per cent in South Australia, as many as we can. So that's an important part of the story.

To pre-empt your next question, the COP bid negotiations continue. I was with the Premier this morning. Australia continues to have overwhelming support for our COP bid internationally, overwhelming support. But the UNFCCC process is pretty opaque in terms of how a dispute gets resolved between two countries. Despite the fact we have overwhelming support, we still have work to do, and I continue to remain focused on that work, as does the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. 

JOURNALIST: Just on another topic away from solar, the latest report of the Great Barrier Reef, your initial comments on that, it seems pretty damning up there.

BOWEN: It is deeply concerning but entirely unsurprising, and it's a reminder of why we're doing what we're doing. You know, those people who want to walk away from net zero betray the national interest. It's in our national interest to keep going to net zero to protect things like the Great Barrier Reef as well as our broader environment, and to create a lot of jobs in investment as we go as well. You know, so this is climate change in action, the impact on the Great Barrier Reef. It's why we're continuing with the hard journey towards net zero. There are those who would walk away from that. They need to explain, you know, why they'd walk away from things like the Great Barrier Reef and so much more.