The 1st Ecovacs Robot Conference, held by China’s top sweeping robot manufacturer Ecovacs (科沃斯, 603486.SH), will start tomorrow and run through Saturday in eastern China’s Suzhou.
The conference, which doubles as “Suzhou Bay Robotic Industry Summit,” is expected to bring together more than 300 robotic companies, over 40 major investment institutions, 40 plus academicians and experts as well as scholars from seven prestigious colleges nationwide.
The event, co-sponsored by China Association for Mechantronics Technology and Application, aims to pool resources and foster a robotic industrial agglomeration in Suzhou, a manufacturing powerhouse an hour’s drive from Shanghai.
The conference will feature panel discussions on challenges confronting China’s robotic industry, cutting-edge technologies, and investment logic, among other topics.
Wuzhong, a district of Suzhou where the event takes place, will seize the opportunity to showcase its industrial and talent policies to court entrepreneurs, capital and talent.
Wuzhong is a hothouse of robotics in Suzhou, seen sometimes as on par with tech hubs like Shenzhen.
It boasts a relatively complete robotic industrial chain comprising players ranging from upstream parts suppliers to midstream integrators to downstream users.
On the back of these strengths and a business-friendly environment, the district has announced its goal to build China’s “No.1 robotic innovation cluster.”
Suzhou is the breeding ground of quite a few robotic leaders such as Ecovacs, Dreame Tech (追觅科技) and Elite Robotics (艾利特机器人) as well as major component producers like Leaderdrive (绿的谐波, 688017.SH).
Much of China has been plunged into a robot frenzy since early this year, when the country issued a raft of policies encouraging the application of robotics in real life.
In particular, a national development plan for the robotic industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) states that by 2025, China is to have a number of globally competitive robotic companies, counting three to five industrial clusters with international influence.
