National Reconstruction Fund Corporation’s chief investment officer, Dr Mary Manning, says the first investments from the $15 billion fund will be announced “within weeks”. Manning made the announcement at the InnovationAus Awards on Wednesday (30 October).
“In the coming weeks, we hope to announce our first Series A/B venture capital investments in some of Australia’s most exciting startups, including some previous winners of the InnovationAus Awards,” Manning said.
“Fifteen billion is a lot of money within equity. Within equity we can do early stage, series A and B, we can do C and D, we can do growth equity, we can do pre-IPO and we can also invest in listed equities.
“That is a huge mandate where we can work with companies right from the early stages until the IPO,” Manning, appointed CIO in June, told the room.
But the government has faced criticism for the slow rollout of the National Reconstruction Fund, announced in 2022, legislated in 2023, and yet to make an investment.
In June, chief operating officer – currently acting CEO – Rebecca Manen, told Senate Estimates the NRFC had received 218 investment proposals by the end of May and it expected to announce initial investments “in the coming months”.
“We’re actively managing over 140 of those investment proposals. In addition, we’ve met with over 70 potential co-investment partners and are actively working with 30 of those,” Manen said.
On Wednesday night, Manning updated that figure to 350 proposals since the NRFC launched the $392 million Industry Growth Program in November last year.
“For manufacturing companies, they need significant investment in factories and facilities to manufacture their products at scale, but it’s difficult to get funding without evidence that scale production will be successful,” Manning said.
Senator Tim Ayres, the Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia, was also at the awards.
“What we must do as a government is learn the lessons of the past and look at the great challenges and opportunities of our future. And craft an industrial and innovation strategy that gets Australia and Australians where they need to be.
“And that is what we are doing. That is what a Future Made in Australia is about – the largest pro manufacturing industrial policy in Australia’s history. That is what the National Reconstruction Fund is about.”
