AN OCEAN anti-corrosion industry coalition was established Nov. 23 in Qingdao.

    Under the leadership of the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the coalition is composed of 13 domestic ocean anti-corrosion enterprises and 13 research institutes and universities.

    The coalition aims to establish close relations between the industry and research sectors in the next five years, striving for over 2-billion-yuan in industrial output and preventing 20 billion yuan of losses caused by marine corrosion.

    With the boom in its coastal business areas, China will build a large amount of infrastructure and ships in the fields of ocean exploration, transportation and shipping in the next five years, which will lead to huge market demand for anti-corrosion technologies.

    Experts estimated that China suffered 1 trillion yuan of direct losses due to ocean corrosion in 2009, making the development of an ocean anti-corrosion industry a top priority.

    The coalition will strive to make breakthroughs in the development of ocean anti-corrosion painting, ocean anti-corrosion engineering and equipment during the exploiting of natural gas and oil.

    Qingdao will give preferential support to the ocean anti-corrosion industry in the next five years, building model anti-corrosion projects.(Li Hao, Liu Miao)