ANSTO’s precinct in southern Sydney is all about putting science to work – leveraging Australia’s most significant science assets located on the southern outskirts of Sydney to support and drive solutions for industry.

nandin, located on ANSTO's Lucas Heights campus, has become a magnet for start-ups and small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), with nine new members joining during the reporting period. There are now 16 members within nandin focusing on developing new solutions for health and respiratory medicine, safety systems and emergency services, air quality infrastructure design and fabrication, cybersecurity, defence and aerospace, automated asset tracking and management and more. These start-ups and SMEs are benefiting from co-location with ANSTO.

Thanks to a $12.5 million grant from the NSW Government work is underway to establish a fit for purpose centre, the nandin Innovation Centre on ANSTO's Lucas Heights campus, co-locating the nandin startup community with students from the Graduate Institute. ANSTO has also signed a partnership agreement with Design Factory Melbourne (Swinburne University, Australia) to enable nandin to become a node of the Design Factory Global Network.

nandin is the first realisation of much broader plans for the ANSTO Innovation Precinct, which will foster close engagement between Australian scientists and both local and international businesses, placing southern Sydney at the heart of innovation in Australia.

The broader ANSTO Innovation Precinct is now recognised as a collaboration area in the Greater Sydney Commission's South District Plan. The innovation and research precinct requires a partnership between government to realise its full potential as an economic catalyst in the District. In May 2020 the Greater Sydney Commission launched the ANSTO Collaboration Area Place Strategy as a result of collaboration between ANSTO and the Sutherland Shire Council, NSW Government departments and agencies, and other stakeholders. The core pillars of the Area Place Strategy are to:

• improve transport connections and accessibility to and from ANSTO
• enhance ANSTO’s economic and employment role
• provide essential infrastructure to support the innovation precinct
• embrace the ecological and indigenous values inherent in the site.