Western Australia’s prominence in mining and energy research was boosted last week with the opening of BHP Billiton’s global technology centre in Bentley.
Western Australia’s prominence in mining and energy research was boosted last week with the opening of BHP Billiton’s global technology centre in Bentley.
The new centre is one of three global innovation centres operated by BHP and is expected to have about 110 researchers when fully resourced in three years.
The BHP centre strengthens the research cluster located around Curtin University.
The area is also home to the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance, which focuses on the oil and gas sector, and a planned minerals and chemistry precinct.
Speaking at last week’s official opening of the BHP centre, chief executive Chip Goodyear said WA was one of the company’s most important regions.
More than 20 per cent of its total assets are in WA, and since 2001 the company has approved 10 major projects in WA worth $6.7 billion.
Mr Goodyear added that BHP spent $100 million each year at its technology centres in Johannesburg, Newcastle and Perth.
The company’s vice-president technology, Dr Megan Clark, said Perth had three main attractions as a global research centre.
One was Perth’s lifestyle attractions, which made it easier to attract quality people.
A second factor was WA’s strong intellectual property management.
Third was Perth’s proximity to substantial BHP operations, including its iron ore mines in the Pilbara, its oil and gas assets off the North West coast and its Worsley Alumina subsidiary.
Dr Clark said the technology centre already had 40 staff, including 20 researchers who previously worked for nickel miner WMC Resources at Belmont.
As well as nickel processing, the technology centre will focus on high temperature mineral processing (i.e. smelters and furnaces), process simulation designed to maximise process automation, geotechnical analysis and high-level mathematics and geophysics.
The head of the Perth technology centre will be Dr Andrew Shook.
Dr Clark said BHP would continue to utilise external research from universities and cooperative research centres, such as the Perth-based Parker Centre.
She added that BHP would initially operate from the Australian Resources Research Centre building and declined to be drawn on whether it might relocate to the planned minerals and chemistry precinct to accommodate planned growth.
The precinct is already home to CSIRO Minerals, which plans to spend $12 million expanding its premises to accommodate extra researchers and new headquarters for the Parker Centre and the CRC for Sustainable Resource Processing.
The precinct will also house a new $75 million headquarters for Curtin’s applied chemistry department and the state government’s chemistry centre.
CSIRO Minerals site manager John Farrow said several mining companies had been evaluating research opportunities in the precinct.
“We are very optimistic that industry groups will take up space in the precinct,” Dr Farrow said.
