Major tenant announced for Lot Fourteen amid new plans
Australia’s largest defence company is moving its headquarters to Lot Fourteen, bringing around 500 employees to the CBD.
BAE Systems Australia, which is providing Hunter Class Frigates and will construct a submarine fleet under AUKUS, has signed on as a tenant at Lot Fourteen’s Innovation Centre, which saw new design plans released today in an updated master plan.
The Australian arm of BAE is currently headquartered in Edinburgh, with the move set to bring approximately 500 employees to Lot Fourteen, while 800 new employees are set to be recruited in South Australia over the next 12 months.
BAE employs more than 6500 people around Australia, with South Australian locations including the Osborne Naval Shipyard, where it is manufacturing Hunter Class Frigates and where construction of the SSN AUKUS submarine fleet will occur.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said the government had been pursuing a partnership with BAE “over many months”, with a commercial agreement now locked in to see the workforce move.
Premier Peter Malinauskas and BAE Systems Australia CEO Craig Lockhart. Photo: David Simmons/InDaily.
“We’ve been working hard behind the scenes over a considerable period with BEA to see them move their new headquarters to here, at Lot Fourteen,” Malinauskas said today.
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“BEA are going to be one of the largest employers in South Australia within the space of the next five years.
“It is exactly the policy pursuit that will see to more innovation, more entrepreneurship, more sharing of knowledge and skills and ideas that can see us move up the value chain of labour within our CBD.
“It also speaks to the fact that building submarines and frigates isn’t just about metalwork. It isn’t just about the type of labour that we’ll see deployed down in Osborne. It also requires the most acute of engineering and innovation skills that will be centre pieced here at Lot Fourteen.”
BAE Systems will be located in Lot Fourteen’s Innovation Centre (centre), renders of which were released today. Image: Supplied
BAE Systems Australia CEO Craig Lockhart said Lot Fourteen had been a “missing piece” in the BAE’s “broader innovation picture”.
“It’s been 12 months of complex, sometimes difficult negotiations, but we’ve shared one thing in common, and that’s the drive, the state’s vision for bringing more people, more investment into the high-tech sector,” he said.
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Lockhart said the company would be moving into the new building alongside “a cohort of other industrial companies, academia and government agencies all focussed on innovation and technological development”.
“This is important because the challenges we share in building these new emerging defence capabilities are quite formidable,” he said.
“Submarines, such as SS AUKUS, will comprise 20,000 parts that require advanced materials and technologies that enable it to operate in a three-dimensional, underwater battle space, focussed on stealth and endurance.”
The Innovation Centre is expected to open late 2027 – early 2028. Image: supplied
Lot Fourteen state project lead Diane Dixon said the new Innovation Centre, a more than $100 million investment according to treasurer Stephen Mullighan, would create a “pipeline of confirmed construction over the next 10 years”.
The Innovation Centre, which will be the first build under a new master plan, currently has 77 per cent of tenancies already committed with a developer yet to be confirmed.
“The building will house over $100 million worth of projects which have already been locked in between the state and the federal government, including the Australian Defence Technologies Academy, the innovation hub, and also the space assembly integration and testing facility,” Dixon said.
The centre is set to be completed late 2027 to early 2028.
The updated master plan was today announced under the SA Innovation Places Leadership Framework, which the government said would lead to over 42,000 innovation jobs around the state.
“Today’s announcement will almost double the number of people working here at Lot Fourteen into the future,” Mullighan said.
The previous Innovation centre plans, as at May 2021. Image: Renewal SA.
