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Being aware of developments in other industries as they’re happening can help you anticipate new solutions to improve efficiencies and add value in your business. Aside from the Internet of Things (IoT), information-driven manufacturing (iDM), social robots and Internet 5.0, here are three trends manufacturers need to watch:

1. Rapid prototyping + crowdfunding: Together, these two trends allow almost anyone to bring solutions to market quicker than many organisations can develop counter measures. It is the very definition of “disruptive innovation”.

2. Cradle-to-grave traceability: Every recall hitting the headlines reminds manufacturers of the critical need for end-to-end traceability to mitigate the risks to consumers and businesses. Intensifying this need are the proliferating counterfeit markets, worth US$32 billion and causing one million deaths annually. Traceability can counteract this.

3. Beyond the IoT: Blockchain is an emerging technology beginning to play a major part in IoT, especially with its potential to overcome many manufacturers’ concerns around data security. Another IoT evolution is machine learning, which falls under the wider artificial-intelligence umbrella. While adding natural language processing to machine learning gives a whole new opportunity: cognitive learning systems.

Find out more about these trends by reading the full story here and watching this video:

 

Food & Drink Business

Wine Australia is running a coordinated program of trade, education and promotional activity across the Asia Pacific, backed by federal government funding, as the sector works to rebuild demand in China and diversify into Southeast Asia.

Australian beef exporters face a 55 per cent tariff on shipments to China for the rest of 2026 after the country exhausted its annual safeguard quota in under six months, removing tariff-free access to one of the sector’s largest markets.

A Western Australian truffle grower says it has unearthed the state’s first cultivated white truffle, opening a potential new product line for a region that already supplies the bulk of the Southern Hemisphere’s black truffle.