CSIRO has inked a $35 million research agreement with Boeing to develop advanced materials and manufacturing.
It's the latest step in a 28-year partnership which was announced at the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia's G'day to Aussie innovation event in Sydney today.
CSIRO CEO, Larry Marshall said Boeing has just celebrated 90 years in Australia, and for nearly a third of that time, has partnered with CSIRO on advanced technologies that have made a real difference to the aerospace industry.
President of Boeing Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, Maureen Dougherty said that over the years, both organisations have invested more than $170 million on 190 joint research projects covering innovative new manufacturing processes, to fire retardants, biofuels and software.
CSIRO's "Paintbond" technology, for instance, has been applied to more than a thousand Boeing airplanes, including some in the skies above Australia, saving millions of dollars in maintenance costs.
The strong relationship with CSIRO was a key factor in Boeing choosing Australia as the location for its largest research and development operation outside the United States.
Australia is also forging stronger ties with Germany in a bid to advance and modernise both countries’ manufacturing sectors.
The Prime Minister’s Industry 4.0 Taskforce in Australia and Platform Industrie 4.0 from Germany have signed a cooperation agreement which will see closer collaboration between the two countries in developing modern manufacturing sectors.
The partnership will create opportunities to advance and modernise both countries manufacturing capacity. It will enable the digitisation and linking of manufacturing processes along global value chains and create opportunities to generate economic prosperity.
The German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Ms Brigitte Zypries, and Federal Minister for Industry, Arthur Sinodinos
announced the partnership yesterday which will help industry groups to work together to prepare both economies for the Industry 4.0 transition.
Sinodinos said the cooperative work under the agreement would be supported by government, industry, and standards and research organisations within both countries.
“I am particularly pleased that the agreement has a strong focus on supporting SMEs in both countries to seize the opportunities offered by Industry 4.0 including through access to a network of test labs," he said.
Platform Industrie 4.0 (Germany) and the Prime Minister’s Industry 4.0 Taskforce (Australia) have agreed to cooperate across five work streams, representing key challenges in the transition to Industry 4.0:
reference architectures, standards and norms;
support for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs);
Industry 4.0-Testlabs;
security of networked systems; and
work, education and training.
Trade between the two countries is sizable but heavily weighted to imports from Germany. According to the Austrade web site, Australia imports goods from Germany totalling $16.1 billion while exports from Australia are worth $3.5 billion.