LiuGong, one of China’s leading construction and mining equipment groups held the inauguration of its new global Research and Development Centre in Liuzhou recently, underlining it said “the company’s long-term commitment to durative innovation, as well as to future technology.” The initiative will expand the company’s R&D capability and it sees the centre as a major milestone. “With the world-class hardware in the new R&D centre, a state of the art testing platform, modern manufacturing plant, as well as the 1,000+ top quality technical team, LiuGong has entered a new era of R&D.”
Zeng Guang’an, Chairman of LiuGong Group, said: ‘‘R&D is the nucleus of the future and the ability to be innovative is an uppermost priority for the future. At LiuGong, R&D has always been major focus. The new centre is a significant commitment to future technology, with many more scientific and technological advances being made. We are confident it will provide all tools we need to become the game-changing company in the construction equipment industry.”
Xue Yiping, Vice Chairman of China Machinery Industry Federation said: “The newly opened R&D centre shares the responsibility to break the bottleneck of technology development for the CE industry. As a leading player in the CE industry, LiuGong is uniquely qualified to help the whole industry to speed up the technology upgrade and to make independent innovations.” Xie Naitang, Head of Guangxi Science and Technology department said: “I hope LiuGong can serve as a role model for CE industry and continue to enhance the capability for independent innovation. Based on the newly opened R&D centre, I believe LiuGong can compete with the leading market players in the world and win in the long run.”
Based in Liuzhou, the global R&D centre will be the new hub that influences LiuGong’s four other world-class R&D facilities in India, Poland, US and the UK. The modern facility spans 110,000 m² and includes an office complex which covers an area of 22,000 m², a global test centre covering an area of 100,000 m². a prototype centre, seven laboratories, and a large outdoor experimental field. It seats 1,200 engineers. Development began in Liuzhou in 2013 and the accumulated investment in the project since then has reached $43.4 million. The new R&D centre will initially focus on major research, development and testing for LiuGong’s lines of wheel loaders, excavators and graders. One of the first projects will be the completion of research and development, as well as testing the latest models of H Series wheel loaders. Alongside this, LiuGong says that its comprehensive range of laboratories will develop sophisticated measures to test and optimise all aspects of machine performance, such as structural design, materials science, electronic and hydraulic efficiency, cooling, vibration and noise. The new Global R&D Centre has several specialised training laboratories including virtual reality studios and industrial design studios, which will also be the focal point for technical training.
