According to the preliminary blurb there will be 1000 jobs at...

According to the preliminary blurb there will be 1000 jobs at the factory before any flow on indirect jobs. That's wonderful for Townsville and Australia and its no wonder government is falling over themselves trying to help but I can't help thinking that battery production would be mostly automated and that if they are going to employ that many rather expensive (by global standards) Australian workers will the final cost of those batteries be competitive on the world market.

The Qld Gov. have stumped up $3.1M for the feasibility study due in the middle of this year, lets hope a realistic appraisal of the manufacturing costs are presented because very few will buy the Townsville batteries if they can obtain a similar product elsewhere at a cheaper price.