The Gladstone Engineering Alliance (GEA) held its annual Major Industry Conference, with project delivery at the top of the agenda. The two-day event ran on 21 and 22 October under the theme "From Announcement to Execution."

GEA CEO Patrick Hastings opened the conference on a positive note, celebrating the region's drive to succeed as being central to the city's growth. "Few regional cities operate at the industrial scale we do," he said. "We have never been a region content to wait for our future to arrive."

Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres struck a similar note by video, pointing to the $2 billion federal and Queensland deal securing Rio Tinto's Boyne smelter and unlocking almost $7.5 billion in new energy investment across Queensland.

CSIRO's Dr Stefan Hajkowicz followed with five megatrends reshaping the region: AI, productivity, electricity demand, geopolitics and health. On productivity, he cited a 2025 McKinsey survey: 88 per cent of organisations use AI, but only about 6 per cent credit it with 5 per cent or more of their earnings.

"Almost everyone is using it. No one's banking it," he said.

Rio Tinto's May McAlister named the next hurdle: getting AI and robotics to work in hot, dusty industrial sites. That dull, dirty or dangerous work is a natural match for autonomous systems.

ARM Hub's Dr Troy Cordie took up that challenge on day two, looking at how Australian industry is adapting technology to stay globally competitive. The focus was on adopting automation: either with physical systems (robots & cobots) or digital automation opportunities: AI.

Key moments from his session:

Australia ranks 35th of 37 countries for robot density, down from 18th. To address this, ARM Hub works in the gap between prototype and production, where neither public nor private funding reaches.

Australia ranks eighth in the world for advanced robotics research. Where companies do adopt, it pays: Brisbane's Watkins Steel added its first robotic line in 2014 and has grown about 20 per cent a year since.

Staff are bringing AI from home. Almost half of Australian workers who use AI admit to breaking company policy, including putting company data into free public tools. Only 30 per cent say their employer has an AI policy. The answer? give staff approved tools, a clear policy and training.

General-purpose robots are still years away, and the reason is data. The data from physical work is tiny next to the text used to train chatbots, and the US, Europe and China are now capturing it at scale. Troy's call: Australia's mines, farms and factories are world-class training grounds, so capture that data here.

Queensland manufacturers ready to start have a path open now. The Queensland Government's $750,000 Manufacturing AI Uplift trial, delivered through ARM Hub, gives eligible businesses services worth up to $250,000 to put AI to work. Regional manufacturers can apply; expressions of interest close on 30 October.