JFD has opened a second New South Wales advanced manufacturing and support facility in Caringbah on 8 April 2025. This came after the opening of a similar specialised manufacturing facility in Beresfield on 26 February.
With this opening, JFD has replaced their previous facilities at Kirrawee and will continue the ongoing maintenance of underwater life support equipment - such as rebreathers and hyperbaric chambers - for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), after JFD’s major underwater life support contract extension.
According to JFD, this facility is the largest purpose-built advanced manufacturing and support hub of its type in the southern hemisphere. The expansion of the two centres in NSW provides JFD Australia with more presence across the eastern side of the country, as its headquarters are located in Perth, WA.
The hyperbaric chambers, which are manufactured at Beresfield and fitted out and commissioned at the new Caringbah centre, are formed with a speciality stainless steel which requires a specific type of welding known as reverse polarity welding.
“It’s quite rare in Australia and there’s not that many people that do it. The thing about our chambers is that they’re pretty much indestructible - as long as you maintain them, they’re not like steel chambers, they won’t corrode. They’re great for military applications. They’re great for being in salty seawater places. We make three main varieties,” Managing Director JFD Australia, Cathy Falkiner, stated.
“We are working with some partner nations to produce chambers for special types of testing. On the whole, the design has stayed pretty rock-solid. It’s pretty bulletproof.”
“Probably the upside for us is how we have improved the in-service support of diving and hyperbaric equipment. We’ve digitised. Productivity has increased. We’re able to service much more quickly to turn equipment around and get them back into service.”
There are over 200 chambers in service in the US and around the world, with some in Europe, Ukraine, North America, South America, Australia and Asia. Through its relationship with the US, JFD has been able to work with Thailand and, through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process, the sale of a chamber, Kenya. For Australia, JFD claims there are eight chambers in the RAN plus some minor transportable ones.
“We’d like to do more in New Zealand. We do supply some existing support to New Zealand. We’d like to do more there,” JFD’s global Head of Defence Rob Hales told ADM when asked about the future of JFD and the company’s Australian presence.
Another future pivot for JFD is AI, with its implementation becoming a real possibility, as the company examines its use both internally and externally.
In the external cases, Hales’ expectation is there will be “a whole series” of uncrewed systems that will be using AI, working with humans and JFD will be looking to reduce the cognitive load of humans underwater”
For its internal processes, Hales sees opportunities in engineering, design and manufacturing.
“I think the important thing to remember here is it has to be a risk adverse industry,” He stated.
“Where we’re putting people, our submarine rescue systems could be operating hundreds of metres below the surface, so we’re going to have a very high bar in terms of the point of which we would go to an automated AI system.
“So having humans in there, having the training and the skills and the exercises that we do is going to be the cornerstone for some time to come.”