Matpack

When Power Gets Expensive, Mixing Efficiency Stops Being Optional

The uncertainty of geopolitics is also making electricity spot prices in New Zealand and Australia harder to predict. Australia and New Zealand have so far avoided the worst of the Strait of Hormuz shock that pushed Japanese and EU wholesale electricity prices up more than 30%. Australia's exposure has been measurably buffered by strong renewables and battery storage, while New Zealand's market was assessed as relatively insulated during the 2021–2023 gas spikes, though that assumption is now being tested and questioned by critics. With gas still setting the marginal spot price during low-renewable periods and the crisis unresolved, that buffer is at risk of narrowing if disruption drags on or deepens.

Extreme heat has become one of the most reliable triggers for price spikes in Australia's National Electricity Market. During the January 2026 heatwave, when Adelaide hit 44.7°C, South Australian wholesale prices spiked to $20,300/MWh, the market price cap, and roughly 200 times the typical trading price of around $100/MWh as air-conditioning demand peaked just as solar generation fell away in the evening. New Zealand sees the same volatility from the opposite direction: in one week in May 2026, the average wholesale spot price jumped 87% week-on-week, from $56/MWh to $105/MWh, as lower wind output and a geothermal outage tightened supply. Both grids are now heavily weather-dependent, which means both are exposed to sudden, short-notice price events tied to conditions no operator controls.

The newest driver is AI. Global data centre electricity demand is forecast to grow 27% in 2026 alone, reaching 132 gigawatts, according to Gartner, and Australia is growing even faster, with data centre electricity consumption forecast to rise 37.7% in 2026 to 6.2 TWh, driven largely by AI-optimised servers. New Zealand is seeing the same shift materialise locally: a Singapore-backed AI data centre under construction near Invercargill is set to become the country's second-largest single electricity user once it opens in 2028, behind only the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.

For manufacturers running continuous processes mixing tanks, agitators, blending lines this combination of drivers matters more than any single price trend. It shows up directly on the power bill, because mechanical agitation is one of the most persistent, always-on energy draws on a processing floor, and a system that has to run continuously has no way to avoid a geopolitical gas shock, a heatwave price spike, or a data-centre-driven tightening of supply. A mixing process that only draws power in short bursts, by contrast, is structurally far less exposed to exactly this kind of volatility.

This raises the question of whether Australian and New Zealand manufacturers have been slower to adopt pneumatic mixing than some overseas industries. The economics of mixing may now deserve a fresh look.

One technology receiving renewed attention is pneumatic pulse mixing supplied by Matpack in Australia and New Zealand. Pulsair systems mix by releasing large, sequential bursts of compressed air or inert gas from the tank floor. Each rising bubble drags liquid upward with it, pulling the tank's contents through a full mixing cycle in seconds, and once the burst is released, no further energy is consumed until the next pulse. There's no shaft, no seal, and nothing mechanical inside the tank at all.

The efficiency numbers reported in industry press back this up. Processing Magazine reported that Pulsair's pulse-air method uses 25 to 75% less energy than mechanical mixers, while completing the mixing cycle 30 to 50% faster. Pulsair's own published data puts the achievable energy reduction as high as 95% in some tank mixing applications, since the system doesn't need to run continuously to keep contents in motion; once the liquid is moving, it stays moving.

For operators exposed to gas-market shocks, weather-driven price spikes and a grid increasingly shared with AI infrastructure, lower energy demand is becoming more valuable than ever. Faster mixing cycles and reduced maintenance are additional benefits. Together, those factors make pneumatic mixing increasingly difficult to ignore.

Sources
International Energy Agency, "Electricity Mid-Year Update 2026," Executive Summary
Modo Energy, "January 2026 heatwave: Record temperatures boost South Australia BESS"
IndexBox, "NZ Electricity Authority Weekly Report," May 2026
Gartner data centre power demand forecasts, via IT Brief New Zealand / ARN, June 2026
United States Studies Centre, "Powering the cloud: Data centres and the future of Australia's grid," April 2026
The Conversation / Mirage News, "Power-hungry data centres: no burden on New Zealand grid," 2026
Goldman Sachs Research, "The Macroeconomic Spillovers From AI Electricity Demand," February 2026
Energies (MDPI), "Effect of Impeller Design on Power Characteristics and Newtonian Fluids Mixing Efficiency in a Mechanically Agitated Vessel at Low Reynolds Numbers"
International Journal of Heat and Technology (IIETA), "A Review of Stirred Tank Dynamics: Power Consumption, Mixing Time and Impeller Geometry"
Processing Magazine, "Pulse-air mixing addresses viscosity, volume challenges," November 2013
Pulsair Systems, published tank mixing efficiency data and installation footprint, pulsair.com

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