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Media release
Australian Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile
Wednesday, 15 August 2001 / MVT108/2001
Australia's Olympic Expertise to Help with Vietnam's Largest Stadium
A consortium of Australian and Chinese companies has signed a contract with the Vietnamese Government to build a sports stadium in Hanoi for the 2003 South East Asian Games, Trade Minister Mark Vaile announced today.
Leading sport infrastructure architectural firm Bligh Voller Neild, one of the chief designers for Stadium Australia, and engineers Connell Wagner and Flack & Kurtz Australia, joined forces with Shanghai construction groups SFECO and SCG last year to form the Hanoi International Stadium Group who were awarded the contract.
Australian consultancy The Linden Group played an important role as consortium convenor and bid director for the consortium.
Mr Vaile said final negotiations had been completed with the A$100 million contract signed at a signing ceremony in Hanoi on August 14, 2001.
"Australia's world class expertise in designing and building sports facilities has again been recognised by the awarding of this contract," Mr Vaile said.
"Bringing together the strengths of cost effective Chinese construction and engineering firms with Australian design and high-tech expertise demonstrates how innovative Australian companies can be when trying to export our skills. There is a lesson in this for other companies."
The Hanoi stadium will be a state-of-the-art 40,000 seat structure in which all major track and field events will take place for the South East Asian Games in December 2003.
Mr Vaile said Austrade and the Australian Embassy in Hanoi had played an important role in achieving this positive outcome. He said the attention focussed on Australia during the Olympic Games had added further weight to the bid.
"The Sports Linkages Program funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Vietnam over the last three years allowed Vietnamese sports authorities to become familiar with all aspects of Australian sports expertise. Vietnam has also contracted tennis, women's soccer and swimming coaches from Australia for its national teams," Mr Vaile said.
Over the last two years Austrade has also organised visits to Australia to demonstrate Australia's sports and infrastructure capabilities to Vietnamese officials. This, along with in-market activities undertaken such as the development of a tailor-made directory of interested Australian companies, has helped maintain Australia's profile as a potential participant throughout a prolonged period of preparation on the Vietnamese side.
Contact:
James Baker (Ministerial) 02 6277 7420 mobile 0418 273 475
Lyndall Sachs (Departmental) 026261 1555
Local Date: Thursday, 20-Nov-2008 20:41:38 EST