Press release from Rolls-Royce plc, 19 February 2002:

Rolls-Royce plc announced today that it is to open its first University Technology Centre (UTC) outside of the UK. The new centre at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, will be first to focus on the company's growing Marine business and will be devoted to research into hydrodynamics.

Scandinavia is the headquarters of the Commercial Marine business of Rolls-Royce, which manufactures in Norway, Sweden and Finland. It also has manufacturing operations in Canada and Poland.

This new UTC will be the 20^th Rolls-Royce has opened and the company intends to develop similar arrangements with universities elsewhere in the Nordic Countries, and in the USA and Germany, where it also has major manufacturing operations.

The Chalmers UTC will support the company’s own in-house hydrodynamics research facilities and will draw on the university’s expertise in computational fluid dynamics to improve the efficiency and reduce the noise created by propellers and other propulsors such as water jets.

A particular focus of the research will be on understanding and optimising the interaction between the propulsors, rudders and the ship’s hull.

The official opening of the new UTC was performed by Dr Mike Howse, Director of Engineering and Technology for Rolls-Royce and Dr Jan-Eric Sundgren, President of Chalmers University of Technology. Also present was Professor Lars Larsson, Professor of Marine Hydrodynamics at Chalmers University, who will be the Director of the UTC.

Mike Howse said: "Rolls-Royce pioneered the concept of University Technology Centres and we have had some excellent results from the 19 we have established in the UK.

"I am confident that our relationship with Chalmers University will enhance our technological capability and be of direct benefit to our growing Marine business, which has a wide portfolio of products serving both the naval and commercial marine markets."

Jan-Eric Sundgren said: "We are very pleased that Rolls-Royce have chosen Chalmers for their first UTC outside the UK. This confirms our strength in marine research, and our co-operation with Rolls-Royce will also benefit to Chalmers further development within this sector"