The first Australia-Netherlands Water Challenge was officially announced on the 9th of May by H.E. Willem Andreae, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Australia. The announcement was made at the Ozwater conference and exhibition in Sydney in conjunction with a special workshop organised in partnership between the Dutch water sector and the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management.

The event was attended by almost 50 representatives from across the Dutch and Australian water sectors. Dutch organisations attending included Royal Haskoning, DHV, Fugro, Hydrologic, Deltares, NWP and the Netherlands Embassy.

The May/June quarterly newsletter from the International Desalination Association (IDA) features a paper by Victor Sim, Finalist of the latest Singapore-Netherlands Water Challenge. Quoting from the paper: "A proposed hybrid system that uses Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO) processes coupled with seawater desalination and a heat sink has specifically evaluated Singapore’s feasibility as a potential test‐bed for the production of industrial water. This proposal has recently gathered much interest in two major student ideas generation platforms, the Singapore‐Netherlands Water Challenge 2012 and the Shell Inter‐varsity Student Paper Presentation 2012."

Following the official announcement by Ambassador Willem Andrea at Ozwater'12, a broad group of Dutch companies and institutions has come together to lead the first Australia-Netherlands Water Challenge. Main partners are Van Oord and Royal HaskoningDHV. They are supported by HydroLogic, Fugro, Rabobank and the Netherlands Embassy. In addition, KLM is sponsoring a return ticket to the Netherlands for the winner. Main partner on the Australian side is the International Water Centre in Brisbane, a centre of excellence in water management representing four major academic institutions: University of Queensland, Griffith University, University of Western Australia and Monash University. Preliminary results of the challenge will be presented by students at the International River Symposium (Melbourne, 8-11 October 2012).