Question Time

State Early Commercialisation Fund

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:26): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation a question about the Early Commercialisation Fund.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: On 6 April this year, the government announced eight recipients of the Early Commercialisation Fund. Recipients were awarded grants of between $300,000 and $50,000. However, it was not disclosed which level of funding these companies received. To clarify, I am not referring to the sum of funding which was disclosed in the press release, which I have a copy of here, but rather under which phase of the Early Commercialisation Fund these grants were received. Therefore, my questions are:

1. Can the minister outline which companies received grants under stage 2 of the Early Commercialisation Fund and which companies received grants under stage 3 of the Early Commercialisation Fund?

2. How many companies have applied for stage 3 funding?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (14:27): I thank the honourable member for his questions. I have answers to some of those questions. There were in excess of 200 expressions of interest for the South Australian Early Commercialisation Fund as of a couple of weeks ago. In terms of grants that have been made, it is now up to a total of 24 grants that have been made.

Tier 1 of up to $50,000 has seen 24 companies granted those funds. So far, 17 of those 24 companies have begun accessing the funds that have been granted. Eight companies have been approved for tier 2 funding from those 24 that will be able to access tier 2 funding once the individualised KPIs for those particular companies, through the tier 1 program, are met. Of those, a further five have been approved for tier 3 funding from that program once they have completed the KPIs for both tier 1 and tier 2.