Takeover target Santos deepens Middle East ties with Qatar deal
The short-term deal with the trading arm of the world's biggest LNG exporter provides further evidence of how the Adelaide-based oil and gas producer's portfolio of LNG interests in the key Asia-Pacific region has come onto the radar of energy heavyweights in the Middle East.
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Sydney Morning Herald
23 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The start-up making drugs in space, then sending them to Australia at 30,870km/h
When it comes to the future, you have to ask: are we there yet? For example, is it possible that space capsules are orbiting the Earth – while they make advanced drug compounds? And then the same capsules are returning to terra firma after travelling at 25 times the speed of sound into our atmosphere? Why, yes ... And when they return to Earth, they are returning to Australia? Yes, again. 'It's actually much less futuristic than it sounds,' says Will Bruey, CEO of Varda Industries, the company launching the drug-factory capsules. 'On average three SpaceX Starlink satellites are launched per day, and our spacecraft is simpler, quite frankly, than a Starlink satellite,' he says. And, while it's early days for California-based Varda, founded in 2021, the pace of launch for these capsules – whose journey takes them from the US, to low earth orbit, to a South Australian testing range for recovery – is expected to increase. The start-up is attempting to create a viable business of manufacturing drugs in space, where the lack of gravity unlocks the possibility of new, more effective – and more profitable – drug compounds that can't be made on Earth. Being in space, the limits on the scale of manufacturing are different to an Earth-bound enterprise – both in the molecular quality of what can be produced and, potentially one day, the scale of the production facility. For now, the company's future depends on how effectively and profitably it can formulate drugs – or at least the most effective primary active pharmaceutical ingredient – in orbit. When discussing drug production, Bruey compares microgravity (ultra-low gravity in orbit) to the effect that refrigeration has had on drug production since it was invented. Before refrigeration existed, people would have asked, how could it create value for pharmaceuticals? Today, refrigeration is a fundamental part of drug and vaccine manufacturing, shipping and storage. It reduces the risk of contamination and helps ensure the drugs are effective. Profitable drug manufacturing would be almost unthinkable without it. One day, space-based drugs may be discussed the same way. 'The way the pharmaceutical industry will think about [Varda] shortly is just another piece of equipment.' Even the name of the spacecraft – the W in Varda's W-series capsule – unofficially stands for 'Winnebago' (or caravan in American English) used in TV series Breaking Bad, which is itself a story about the remote, compartmentalised cooking up of drugs. 'Instead of going to the desert, we're going to space,' Bruey said. Likewise, Varda is hauling its equipment to a destination to make its batch, then coming back. 'So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll just be increasing the amount of Winnebagos that are going out to space and back.' 'There's a lot of low-hanging fruit and optimisation to be done in that paradigm.' Any drug with a formulation improvement worth more than $US200 a gram is viable for Varda to manufacture today. But Varda forecasts it can drive down the cost from $US200 to $US20 'pretty easily by just making our systems more reusable'. To push lower than that, the company will construct a permanent station with manufacturing equipment that can be used for multiple drugs, Bruey says. Much of the science around drugmaking in space has been done. There have been numerous experiments on pharmaceuticals, for example, on the International Space Station. Varda hopes to have a space-made drug in humans by the end of the decade. In an era of sagging productivity, it's worth considering the value of genre-melding new ventures. The question is: how much demand is there for a service that is new to the world? And on Earth – in Australia – how many re-entries could we see? Adelaide-based company, Southern Launch, was formed in 2017 as a spaceport operator providing launch services. It has since begun offering orbital re-entry services for customers like Varda. Their range, at Koonibba in South Australia, enjoys clearer skies with less air traffic than test ranges in the US, giving more flexibility to Varda and other clients, Southern Launch says. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the missions conducted for Varda so far, 'mark an incredible step forward for Australia as the global landing site for re-entries and the in-space manufactured goods the capsules carry.' Investing in an unproven business model is riskier than investing in say, inner city residential property. But Bruey sees Varda as carving out a niche that can expand as demand grows. 'Basically, there's only four fundamental forces of physics, and gravity is one of them, and we have a knob on [it], and no other company does.' (If you're wondering, the three other forces are: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Bruey knows about physics because he studied the subject at Cornell University before founding a couple of companies and working at Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bruey then met up with Delian Asparouhov, who was looking to invest in a company that could do this work. Asparouhov was looking for someone with Bruey's background and who 'was willing to drop everything and go on this adventure'. Varda now has backing from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. It has raised $US187 million in a new funding round this month, bringing the total capital raised to $US329 million. The bet that money can be made by low-orbit manufacturing has caught the attention of SpaceX, which reportedly has plans to get into the space-drug game by manufacturing too. Elon Musk's company plans to use its massive – and recently unlucky – Starship rocket for the purpose, according to Bloomberg. Sources close to Varda call the report about SpaceX's plan, called Starfall, a 'validation' of Varda's business model. Like SpaceX, Varda's goal isn't science, it's business: advanced, space-tech business, with the potential to unlock a huge new market that could one day involve large in-orbit factories. The in-space manufacturing market could be worth $US10 billion in five years, according to McKinsey. But exploiting a fundamental force of physics for profit comes with some hard realities. If you send the capsule into space, you must find a reliable place to recover the spacecraft – closing the loop on the production process. That's where Australia comes in. Varda's first craft W-1, launched in June 2023, was due to return in July, but instead got delayed as the company sought permission for the landing in Utah. It remained in orbit for eight months while the details of a new license were resolved between government authorities. While W-1 was in orbit, Varda reached out to Australia's space industry, looking for reliable space return services. W-1's February 2024 return coincided with Varda being granted a 'Part 450 re-entry license' from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation, part of a new process to accommodate repeated missions common in commercial space. Varda now has a FAA license which allows the company to launch and re-enter a craft without spelling out the identical parameters of the mission on repeated applications. When Varda's W-2 landed in South Australia, Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency said it highlighted 'the opportunity for Australia to become a responsible launch and return hub for the global space community, capitalising off the geographic advantages of our expansive continent.' Unlike crewed missions, which must gently skim into the atmosphere without burning up to bring humans safely home, Varda's missions comes in 'ballistically, as if it's like a missile'. In that phase, the Winnebagos achieve Mach 25, twenty-five times the speed of sound, or 30,870 kilometres per hour. Varda has attached a camera to the capsule to capture the dramatic re-entry footage, which looks something like a gas log on overdrive. In space. The pink glow you see is plasma, Bruey says, from the capsule moving so fast and creating so much heat 'it's literally ripping the molecules in the atmosphere apart and ripping away their electrons'. 'The streaks of what looks like fire is the heat shield 'ablating', that is the little pieces coming off intentionally to take away the heat, shedding it from the spacecraft.' So far, Varda has created a crystal form of an HIV drug ritonavir in space. It has research collaborations with large pharma brands, whose names Varda would not give, citing non-disclosure agreements. W-2 and W-3 landed in February and May 2025 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. W-4 is currently in orbit. Varda says it is on track for four missions in 2025 – with plans to expand to a double-capsule mission in 2026. From there, the pace is expected to increase to a weekly pace. Veteran space industry observer and contributor Brett Biddington says Australia is 'well-suited to support the recovery of payloads from space' with a historical record that is 'unblemished'. 'Whether a viable business can be made just from recovery support is another question,' he says. He expects that the 'activity will be lumpy and sporadic' and can best thought of as a 'supplementary income stream' to one that is more reliable. Varda's plan isn't to create a new business alone, but the industry needed to support and grow the enterprise. With the capsules going up and coming back, we will soon know if Varda is successful.
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Japan PM's future in doubt after election debacle
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's future was unclear Monday after his coalition appeared to have disastrously lost its upper house majority in elections that saw strong gains by a right-wing populist party. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed almost continuously since 1955, and its partner Komeito had to win 50 seats in Sunday's vote but they secured only around 41, according to local media projections. Voters angry at inflation turned to other parties, notably the "Japanese first" Sanseito, which made strong gains with its "anti-globalist" drive reminiscent of US President Donald Trump's agenda. The debacle comes only months after Ishiba's coalition also lost its majority in the lower house, suffering the LDP's worst result in 15 years. Ishiba, 68, a self-avowed policy "geek" seen as a safe pair of hands when he won the LDP leadership in September -- on his fifth attempt -- was tight-lipped late Sunday about his future. "It's a difficult situation, and we have to take it very humbly and seriously," Ishiba told broadcaster NHK. Asked about his future, he said only that he "cannot speak lightly of it". "We can't do anything until we see the final results, but we want to be very aware of our responsibility," Ishiba added. If he goes, it was unclear who might step up as the LDP's 11th premier since 2000 now that the government needs opposition support in both chambers. "Ishiba may be replaced by someone else, but it's not clear who will be the successor," Hidehiro Yamamoto, politics and sociology professor at the University of Tsukuba, told AFP. - Rice price - After years of stagnant or falling prices, consumers in the world's fourth-largest economy have been squeezed by inflation since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In particular, the price of rice has doubled, squeezing many household budgets despite government handouts. Voter Hisayo Kojima -- one of legions of older people in Japan's falling and ageing population -- said outside a voting station on Sunday that her pension "is being cut shorter and shorter". "We have paid a lot to support the pension system. This is the most pressing issue for me," the 65-year-old told AFP in Tokyo. Not helping is lingering resentment about an LDP funding scandal, and US tariffs of 25 percent due to bite from August 1 if there is no trade deal with the United States. Japanese imports are already subject to a 10 percent tariff, while the auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of jobs, is reeling from a 25 percent levy. Weak export data last week, which showed plummeting US-bound auto deliveries, stoked fears that Japan could tip into a technical recession. Despite Ishiba securing an early meeting with Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, there has been no accord. - 'Japanese first' - The last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in 2007. That was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years. Today, the opposition is fragmented, and chances are slim that the parties can form an alternative government. Populist opposition party Sanseito wants "stricter rules and limits" on immigration, opposes "globalism" and "radical" gender policies, and wants a rethink on decarbonisation and vaccines. Last week, it was forced to deny any links to Moscow -- which has backed populist parties elsewhere -- after a candidate was interviewed by Russian state media. "They put into words what I had been thinking about but couldn't put into words for many years," one voter told AFP at a Sanseito rally.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
As suitors circle Healthscope, its management mulls a different path
The sales process for Healthscope's failed private hospital business kicks off in earnest this Monday with up to 30 potential suitors due to file their tentative offers for its 37 Australian hospitals, employing 19,000 staff nationally. But the non-binding offers won't include a bid from Healthscope's current management, who are contemplating a scheme to convert the company into a not-for-profit entity. It would mirror the resurrection of Australia's largest child care provider Goodstart Early learning, from the ashes of the collapsed ABC Learning empire, as a not-for-profit provider. Healthscope insiders have confirmed reports in the Australian Financial Review last week that its chief executive, Tino La Spina, is working on the plan as an alternative to a sale of the business to either commercial interests or other Australian not-for-profit operators like St Vincent's Health Australia. Healthscope declined to comment. People with knowledge of the proposal, who are not authorised to discuss the matter, confirmed that the plans are not advanced enough to put in a non-binding indicative offer by the Monday, July 21 deadline. But La Spina's team have been consulting with the receivers from McGrathNicol who are managing the sale, with a view to putting in a proposal during the second stage of the sales process where interested parties are expected to lodge binding offers for the business. This includes local not-for-profit operators, ASX-listed Ramsay Health Care, privately owned Healthe Care and a potential debt-for-equity swap that could see lenders like UK-based Polus Capital take control. The receivers are acting for lenders which are owed $1.7 billion, according to documents lodged with the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Australia's Big Four banks are among the lenders which will be hit with significant losses as the sales price is not expected to get anywhere near what is owed to them. The debt includes $52 million owed to the former owner, Canadian financial giant, Brookfield, which had $2 billion in equity wiped out when the group collapsed into administration earlier this year.
