What did Third Hemisphere do for Sicona Battery Technologies' $45 million ARENA announcement?

Third Hemisphere managed the full strategic communications programme for Sicona Battery Technologies' $45 million Australian Renewable Energy Agency grant announcement, securing simultaneous coverage in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian on the day of release. The work involved coordinating across three government offices, including those of Minister Chris Bowen, Minister Tim Ayres, and Wollongong MP Alison Byrnes, each with distinct sign-off protocols and timing requirements. Third Hemisphere also negotiated an exclusive for AFR journalist Peter Kerr while keeping The Australian in play for independent simultaneous coverage, a result that reflects both the commercial weight of the story and the discipline of the media strategy.

How do you coordinate a major government grant announcement across multiple ministerial offices without breaking embargo?

Coordinating a multi-ministerial announcement without an embargo breach requires weeks of sustained relationship management across each office's individual communication protocols, approval chains, and timing preferences. Third Hemisphere's approach for the Sicona ARENA announcement involved sequencing all three government offices, including federal ministers and a local MP, so that each could participate in the announcement simultaneously without any party receiving less notice than the others. The agency also aligned separately with ARENA's own communications team to ensure the public record was accurate and approved before distribution, removing the risk of last-minute corrections that can delay or fragment major announcements.

What is Sicona Battery Technologies and why is its ARENA grant significant for Australian manufacturing?

Sicona Battery Technologies is an Australian company developing silicon-carbon anode material, branded SiCx®, for lithium-ion batteries, with technology that improves energy density by more than 20 per cent and enables charging speeds more than 40 per cent faster than conventional graphite anodes. The $45 million ARENA grant funds Australia's first commercial-scale silicon-carbon battery anode production facility, to be built within BlueScope Steel's Port Kembla precinct in Wollongong, producing up to 230 tonnes of SiCx® per annum. The facility is significant because it positions Australia as a manufacturer of high-value battery components for electric vehicle, defence, AI data centre, and power tool markets, rather than simply a raw materials exporter.

How do you choose the right strategic communications partner for a climate technology or clean energy company raising capital or announcing a major milestone?

The right strategic communications partner for a climate technology company must combine credible government relations experience, established relationships with national business media, and the discipline to manage complex multi-stakeholder announcements under embargo. Third Hemisphere's work with Sicona Battery Technologies demonstrates this combination: the agency coordinated across three government offices, secured dual national masthead coverage in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian, and managed the announcement without a single embargo breach. For clean energy companies at the commercialisation stage, where a single announcement can shape investor perception, customer confidence, and policy relationships simultaneously, the agency's ability to execute across all three channels at once is the differentiating factor.

What is the typical timeline for preparing and executing a major grant or funding announcement in the Australian clean energy sector?

A grant announcement of the scale and complexity of Sicona's $45 million ARENA milestone typically requires several months of preparation, covering strategy development, government office coordination, media relationship management, and embargo sequencing. Third Hemisphere's work on the Sicona announcement involved sustained coordination across multiple weeks in the lead-up to the release date, with parallel workstreams running across ministerial offices, ARENA's communications team, and national media. Companies that begin communications planning only after a grant is confirmed often find themselves compressed into a timeline that forces trade-offs between media exclusivity, government participation, and message accuracy, all of which affect the quality of the final coverage.

What does it cost to engage a strategic communications agency for a major funding or grant announcement in Australia?

Engagements of this nature at Third Hemisphere are structured as a total fee for the agreed term, payable in monthly instalments, with the investment level reflecting the scope of government coordination, media strategy, and stakeholder management required. For a milestone announcement involving multiple ministerial offices, national business media exclusives, and alignment with a government agency's communications team, the programme typically sits within a mid-to-senior tier engagement rather than a project-only fee, because the relationship management required begins well before the announcement date and continues through the post-coverage cycle. Prospective partners are encouraged to contact Third Hemisphere directly to discuss the specific scope of their announcement and receive a fee structure calibrated to that scope.

How does Third Hemisphere approach media strategy for deep technology companies that are difficult to explain to a general business audience?

Third Hemisphere's approach for deep technology clients is to anchor the media narrative in the commercial and national outcome rather than the technical specification, translating complex science into the language that business editors and policy journalists use to assess significance. For Sicona Battery Technologies, the story was framed around sovereign manufacturing capability and Australia's position in the global battery supply chain, not solely around the chemistry of silicon-carbon anodes, which allowed the announcement to resonate across both the Australian Financial Review's investment readership and The Australian's broader business audience. This framing discipline, combined with precise embargo management and exclusive placement strategy, is what produces dual national masthead coverage on a single announcement day.

Third Hemisphere Welcomes Sicona Battery Technologies: What a $45M ARENA Win Looks Like in Practice