Mick, do you remember Australian Magnesium, an IPO backed by the Qld government in late 2001. It had access to some patented CSIRO alloys and some fancy casting tech, I thought it was going to be the start of a resurgence in our manufacturing industry value adding to our abundant raw materials with a minimal labour requirement but within 5 years it was almost belly up. The scraps were exported to China where it is now operating as Magontec, still listed on the ASX but with next to none of the original equity. Since 2001 of course we have lost the car plants and unfortunately its a long way back now for any sort of large scale manufacturing in Australia.
