Prime Minister Scott Morrison congratulates PI on its “tremendous success” during tour of expanded facility

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Member for Chisholm Gladys Liu visited Planet Innovation’s Melbourne office last week to tour our expanded manufacturing and design facilities, and discuss the recently announced Patent Box tax incentive.

Touring the site with CEOs Stuart Elliott and Sam Lanyon, the PM was impressed by PI’s rapid growth and the wide range of products being developed and manufactured – including the Geri imaging incubator, the SteraMist decontamination unit and the ingestible Atmo Gas Capsule.

PM Scott Morrison and Gladys Liu MP tour PI meeting with (clockwise from top left) Head of Project Leadership Rebecca Bartel; Atmo Biosciences CEO Mal Hebblewhite; Senior Production Engineer Rajeev Gupte; and PI CEOs Sam Lanyon and Stuart Elliott.

Speaking after the tour, Mr Morrison, who previously visited in 2017 when he was treasurer, congratulated Planet Innovation on its “tremendous success”.

“It’s great to be back here at Planet Innovation. It’s been a few years since I’ve been here, but you’ve doubled in size. Your product range has expanded. You’ve grown through COVID. It’s quite a success story. You’ve broken through, particularly getting that capital on board to realize your vision for this amazing business. And you’ve been helping thousands, if not millions of people all around the world with these incredible devices that you’re developing,” Mr Morrison said.

Gladys Liu MP added: “I’m so proud to have Planet Innovation in my electorate of Chisholm. We have the engineers, the experts here, but we also provide a lot of training opportunities for students. So we are training our future for this country and the world.”

PI’s CEO Stuart Elliott said he was very pleased to be able to share Planet Innovation’s success with the PM and Ms Liu.

“We are delighted to see the support of Prime Minister Morrison for PI and the Australian medical device manufacturing industry in general. This is a high value global industry that PI and other companies have demonstrated Australia can be globally competitive in – bringing crucial export dollars and jobs to Australia,” Stuart said.

Stuart went on to commend the Patent Box tax incentive, announced in this year’s federal budget. Under the scheme, Australian businesses will pay lower tax rates on profits generated through the commercialization of locally developed and patented biotechnology and medical innovations.

“We often hear commentary that Australia is good at R&D and poor at commercialization.  If you want R&D outcomes, you create R&D incentives, if you want commercialization outcomes, you need to create commercialization incentives, and this is exactly what the Patent Box tax incentive is and we commend it for being a good step in the right direction,” Stuart said.

“The genius of the Patent Box tax incentive is that this is not a handout, and no one is losing any tax dollars because of it. Instead, this is positive stimulation for the industry. The Government has delivered on the critical first step. Now it is going to be up to us in the industry to stand on top of the shoulders of Government and do our bit.”

This is the second visit by a federal cabinet member in two months. Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews visited in March in her previous role as Minister for Industry, Science and Technology.