3RT is in liquidation. A federal strategy still showcases it.

Is 3RT still in administration? No. On 16 October, creditors voted to wind up 3RT Holding Pty Ltd, ACN 169 535 782. The same notice put three other companies into liquidation: 3RT Technologies Pty Ltd (ACN 611 680 570), 3RT (Australia) Pty Ltd (ACN 644 217 229) and 3RT Labs Pty Ltd (ACN 605 045 341).

3RT turned plantation timber into engineered hardwood, and the federal government held it up as an example. The National Robotics Strategy still uses 3RT as a case study and repeats its forecast of A$44.5 million in revenue over five years. The Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre's page for a 3RT project, which lists A$698,420 in government funds, still says "In progress".

Pages like these are rarely updated once published, so this is not a criticism of either organisation. It does mean someone looking up 3RT after the vote meets the growth story before the liquidation.

What remains is a set of rights, and they sit in one place. Every 3RT patent and trade mark on the IP Australia register is registered to the holding company, and the liquidators now control all four companies.

The four companies appointed McGrathNicol's Robert Smith and Mark Knight as voluntary administrators in July. Later notices give the appointment date as 9 July; the first notice said 10 July.

An administration ends at a second creditors' meeting. Creditors choose between a deed of company arrangement (a binding deal with creditors), handing the companies back to their directors, or liquidation.

3RT's second meeting was called for 13 August. It was adjourned and resumed on 16 October, 64 days later, and that day creditors resolved that all four companies be wound up. ASIC published the notice on 19 October, naming Robert Bruce Smith and Mark Thomas Knight as liquidators.

From appointment to liquidation took 99 days. On 20 October, McGrathNicol's creditor page still described a voluntary administration, and 3RT's own website mentioned neither process. Neither is unusual a few days after a vote.

The process came out of Flinders University. A Flinders professor developed it and commercialised it through 3RT with Bosch Manufacturing Solutions, the university says.

3RT bonded veneers from young plantation trees into large blocks that cut and machine like traditional hardwood. Its main patent describes "a plurality of natural wood pieces adhesively bonded together by a crosslinked thermoplastic adhesive".

A small prototype line was installed at 3RT's Adelaide innovation centre, according to the growth centre. The Robotics Strategy shows a 3RT robot "on the production line built at the BAMS facility", the plant of Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions. 3RT's own website names Henkel, the adhesives company, as "a key partner and investor".

The work was still being refined. Flinders' Factory of the Future describes operators scoring each block by eye every 7 to 15 minutes, and a machine-learning camera system the university was developing to do that job.

The companies held different things. 3RT (Australia) Pty Ltd holds a current PEFC chain-of-custody certificate, a sustainability credential for wood products, valid to November 2030. A 2020 City of West Torrens council item, in Adelaide, is titled "3RT Technologies Pty Ltd Lease - 240 Morphett Road, North Plympton".

The growth centre's page says "3RT forecast $44.5M in revenue over 5 years" and projects 51 jobs created or upskilled. It lists A$698,420 in government funds and A$2,628,420 from industry for the project.

3RT Holding also reported research and development spending under the federal R&D Tax Incentive: A$2.1 million in 2021-22, A$2.2 million in 2022-23 and A$4.2 million in 2023-24. That is A$8.5 million in three years, and the last year was nearly double the one before.

A forecast is not a sale, and R&D spending is money going out, not coming in.

IP Australia lists four granted Australian patents, and 3RT Holding is the patentee of all four.

Three of them are older than the company. They date from 2008 and 2010, were filed by Style Limited and were assigned to 3RT Holding in 2016.

The fourth was filed by 3RT Holding itself in 2015 and granted in Australia in 2021. The same invention was patented in the United States in 2019 and in Canada in 2023.

3RT Holding also owns two registered trade marks: 3 WOOD, and DESIGNER HARDWOOD SUSTAINABLE WOOD FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. None of the patents or trade marks is registered to the three operating companies.

That matters because each company in a liquidation has its own assets and its own creditors, unless the estates are pooled. A supplier owed money by 3RT Technologies is a creditor of 3RT Technologies. The patents are registered to 3RT Holding.

The notices do not say why the vote waited two months, what the administrators recommended or whether a buyer came forward. Nor do they say whether the patents, the plant or the Adelaide site will be sold, or to whom. Those answers will come from the liquidators.

The Robotics Strategy describes 3RT as it hoped to be. The ASIC notice describes what happened. The patents sit between the two, in the holding company's estate.

We publish public-record information, not advice. The liquidators are the authoritative source on the liquidation. Nothing here is a statement about the value of any asset, about any party's claim, or about 3RT Industries, a separately held Queensland business name.