ASX-listed explosives giant Dyno Nobel has bucked the Melbourne/Sydney dominance and will officially open its global headquarters in Brisbane on Friday.
Dyno Nobel – which changed its name from Incitec Pivot last year – made the move from Melbourne to be closer to its mining customers and Moranbah Ammonium Nitrate Plant in the Bowen Basin.
The company – which is in two levels in the Green Square North Tower in Fortitude Valley – joins heavyweights Flight Centre, Dominos Pizza and TechnologyOne which have their global HQs in the Queensland capital.
And Dyno Nobel is pulling all stops to celebrate the company’s past with a new museum, featuring the history of explosives and the company’s 160-year heritage back to the pioneers of the industry, Alfred Nobel, William Bickford and Dr Melvin Cook.
It also showcases Dyno Nobel’s history as a global explosives maker, with the invention of the safety fuse in 1831 and the patent of dynamite by Swedish inventor Nobel in 1867.
The move to Brisbane marks a tumultuous time for Dyno Nobel.
In 2025 Dyno Nobel completed the separation and sale of its Incitec Pivot fertilisers business to Ridley Corporation.
The sale and rebranding of Incitec Pivot was part of the strategy to become the leading global explosives company, united under the brand name that traces its roots back to Nobel.
The company sold its fertiliser business to Ridley, its Gibson Island manufacturing plant to Goodman Group last year, and its Phosphate Hill fertiliser facility, 150km from Mt Isa, was sold to Mayfair in June this year.
Dyno Nobel’s new HQ brings together 250 staff, including some who were previously housed at the Gibson Island plant, as well new roles which have transferred to Brisbane from Victoria.
A small number of staff remain in Melbourne and across Queensland the company has about 800 employees and contractors.
Dyno Nobel CEO Mauro Neves (illustrated) says a Queensland-based HQ “made sense”, as mining skyrockets in the state and the company continues to expand in Australia and around the world.
“Australia, and Queensland, is known around the world as a critical minerals powerhouse, and I’m thrilled to move our global HQ to such an important region with so much going on,” he says.
Dyno Nobel has 4700 staff around the world and operates in six continents.
Robot grant
Milton-based autonomous mapping and robotics company Emesent has been awarded a $3m grant from the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects.
The grant will help it develop and commercialise Cortex AI, an open, modular autonomy platform that enables any robotic system or vehicle to navigate, map, and operate in challenging and GPS-denied environments.
Emesent chief technology officer and co-founder Dr Farid Kendoul says the company’s vision was to be a world leader in autonomous digitisation of the most challenging and unreachable places on earth.
“That starts with robots that can navigate and sense autonomously, without GPS, on any platform,” he says.
“Our team estimates that the GPS-denied autonomous mapping and navigation industry will reach $14bn by 2030. Cortex AI is the engine that makes this scale possible.”