OREANDA-NEWS. April 15, 2011. China's most modernized steel producer and The University of Queensland, University of New South Wales, Monash University, University of Wollongong have jointly signed an agreement to establish the Baosteel-Australia Joint Research and Development Centre which will be headquartered at UQ's St Lucia campus in Brisbane, reported the press-centre of Baosteel.

The Joint R&D Center will seek to create fundamental knowledge and exploitable technologies with commercial relevance to steel industry, and will focus on metallurgy and new materials, energy utilisation, environmental sustainability and other new technologies. Baosteel will provide up to USD 25 million over five years for research and development projects at the centre.

Mr. Jia Qinglin, Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference attended the Center's launch. 

Mr Lejiang Xu, the chairman of  Baosteel Group, led a delegation of Baosteel executives to Australia for the signing of the agreement and attended the centre's launch at UQ. 

"Baosteel and Australia enjoy good collaboration relationship in quite a long time, the establishment of  Baosteel-Australia Joint Research and Development Centre will broaden the area of collaboration, and promote the existing collaboration to a new height. " Mr Xu said.

"Baosteel-Australia Joint Research and Development Centre is the first R&D Center that Baosteel has set up overseas, we regard it as a milestone. It is expected to attract more Australian talents to join the R&D projects by building the centre an international and open-oriented platform for combination of study, research and production. We hope the centre could be a model of cooperation between China and Australia.

UQ's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Greenfield, said Chinese companies had invested billions of dollars in Australian ore mining and supply chains, and he welcomed Baosteel's extension of its investments into high-quality Australian research.

 "Partnership with a giant manufacturer and consumer of Australian resources will enable UQ researchers to target practical solutions to global manufacturing and sustainability problems," Professor Greenfield said. "Collaboration with three other Australian universities will add value to the R&D centre's projects, and give altitude to the international reputation of Australian university research."