Business News - WA
At Close of Business podcast October 2 2024
All the latest business news from WA deliver daily. At close of business, news briefing. Good afternoon and welcome to the Outclose of Business podcast. I'm Sam Jones and I'll be reading your afternoon headlines. Frontier Energy still expects former Premier Mark McGowan to join its borders chair, while the fallout from yesterday's grid access snob appears to have impacted a $40 million capital raise. Frontier was dealt a significant blow yesterday when it missed out on reserve capacity credits from the Australian Energy Market operator, which would have given it a pathway to provide electricity to the Southwest interconnected system for a year from October 2026. The decision hinge on Frontier's desire for a five-year price lock-in for the energy it received, which it requested as its sort certainty for a $215 million debt facility with Mike Cannon Brooks backed in for a debt now scrapped. A $23 million capital raise could also be impacted by the call, with Frontier entering a trading halt over the deal this morning. Company is developing the $304 million Waruna solar project in the state south, an unexpected influx of battery capacity in the state, incentivised by AMO's non-co-optimised essential system services scheme, ruled the project out of the running for grid access after a project generation shortfall did not come to pass. And back in Perth now, Australia's biggest pub could become even bigger, with its operator applying for an additional 500-person capacity to accommodate a regular patronage of 3,000 people. The Canfield operator, Three-Pound Group, through Riverbridge Hospitality, has applied to the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industries for an increased capacity. Three-Pound Group proposed to increase the Canfield's patronage from 2,500 to 3,000 people. The Canfield is the country's largest pub with five bars, 175 beer taps, a microbrewry and a beer garden on a 9,000 square metre site next up to Stadium. Three-Pound Group General Manager, Tim McClernan, told business news the increased capacity would help reduce lines of 1,200 people on regular nights. He said if the increased limit was approved, the venue would be operating at 70% of its potential capacity and would not become overcrowded. And finally, Western Australia has tipped up its high-end residential property value increase in the next 12 months and with strong demand in the recent quarter. CBRE today released its prestige residential value insight for the third quarter of financial year 24. Finding South Australia and WA had the strongest demand for high-end property in the country. In its report, CBRE found 40% of value is surveyed, claimed demand for prestige property was strong or very strong. The highest price growth was predicted in WA, South Australia and New South Wales, with 54% of surveyed value is expecting house values to grow in the next 12 months. Value is reported the demand was strongest for houses valued up to $10 million and welling between $10 million and $20 million. For more information, visit businessnews.com.au/events/events/events/webinars, book-launchers, and Gala Rewards programs. Our forums showcase the policies and issues affecting Western Australia within industry and government. Our events are your platforms to engage and connect with the Western Australian business community. Visit businessnews.com.au/events for more information. Welcome back to our Clothes of Business. I'm Nadia Woody-Hajo, and today I'll be speaking to Sam Jones, who wrote the ICT infrastructure feature for the recent business news magazine. Sam, what did you focus on for the feature? So look, it was a pretty broad feature, but I did knuckle down a bit into data centres and I guess the growth of data centres in Australia, but more specifically in WA. Over the past maybe 10 years, we've seen quite a few large investors come in to prop up these data centres because of WA's proximity to Asia. I guess the way to view it is that we are a sort of link between the East Coast and Singapore, and then obviously Singapore being Singapore is the link to everyone else in the world. So it was just generally a look at some of the players in the space, what they're doing, not just the people building the centres but also some of the technology that's being developed in WA, and some of the new centres that have opened, WA's seen two centres open in the Northwest recently, which is critical for our mining infrastructure as AI gets integrated more into mining, so in Newman and Port Headland we've seen somewhat smaller data centres open, but data centres nonetheless. It sounds like a lot's happening here, and aside from just companies opening data centres, are there other WA companies in this space? So yeah, one of the really interesting companies in that space that probably a lot of our listeners have heard of before but don't necessarily understand exactly what they're, I guess, pushing at the moment was down under geo solutions, Doug, as they're known more so now. So Matt Lamont, who's the founder of that company, originally it was a mining geophysics company, and they've sort of transitioned more towards data centres and big data in general. The technology that they've developed, Doug Cool, it's a cooling solution for the graphics and the computer processing units that are in data centres. Easiest way to describe it, these units take an immense amount of power to generate the answers they do and the compute power they do, and they get quite hot as well. Cooling systems have been fans of refrigeration, whereas Doug has developed an immersion cooling system which basically involves putting all these really complex bits of technology into water to cool it. So without getting too much into the specifics, basically it cuts electricity use for these centres by around 50%, and it's also way less water-intensive. I think it saves about 25% of the water usage, and they've signed a massive deal with one of the largest cooling companies in the world over in the US. So sort of exploring what that deal is and what it means for the industry as a whole, I guess. Really interesting to listen to the technical aspects of that kind of infrastructure. And Sam, you started off the feature talking about how WA's sort of on the verge of becoming a global data powerhouse, and you mentioned as well that the state's well positioned to be a global data centre hub. So what needs to happen to submit WA's position as that? Yeah, so broadly speaking, data centre is one of the most important things is electricity. I'm sure most of our readers are familiar with that. Now WA's been a really attractive place for a lot of data centre operators because of our potential for renewables. There's a lot of effort going into reducing the emissions of these centres and trying to implement renewable electricity into them. If you look at Green Square, DC, which is one of the data centre providers who are shortly going to start quite a large data centre in Perth, they're looking to power their data centre almost entirely with renewables. And I think you'll see a lot of the industry go that way, and that's what makes WA attractive. So in terms of how can we remain at the forefront of especially Australia's data centre industry and remain the most attractive destination, it's about ensuring that our electricity supply is reliable, but not just reliable, also cheap, and renewables are incorporated into it. So that's probably one of the biggest challenges that the industry will face in the next 10 years. But I think there's some pretty positive feelings in the industry about WA's position to fulfil renewable requirements and have a cheaper electricity supply. So we'll see how that goes. Aside from that, skills, which anyone in ICT will tell you, it's been a perennial issue for them. There's a massive feeling in the industry that graduates are just not coming in, job ready. There was an Australian Information Industry Association report, the state of the nation report they do each year, which 99% of respondents said that graduates were not job ready, which is a pretty, you know, 99% that's a pretty scary number for an industry to face. So I think aside from electricity, it's going to be, you know, really barreling down on how we can improve our education on these types of industries. Really interesting to see how the state will do in this sector. And a lot happening here, and in probably an industry that many people don't think about daily, especially not me, so it's been a great read. And if listeners would like to read Sam's ICT infrastructure feature, you can go online at businessnews.com.au or pick up this September 30 to October 13 edition of the Business News magazine that's out now. Thank you for listening. Thank you Sam for joining me. Thanks Nadhu. The latest business news, deliver daily. Subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. For all the latest business news, visit businessnews.com.au. [MUSIC] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]