A total of 27 agreements were signed for investments valued at a combined 2.5 billion yuan (US$343 million) at a ceremony in Shanghai on September 21, signaling the city’s stepped-up efforts to bolster its manufacturing sector.
The ceremony took place in Gucun, a township in northern Shanghai’s Baoshan District, where the city’s Robot Park is located.
The signing of the deals is part of the park’s key imperatives in the second half of this year.
The park, covering a planned area of 3.09 square km, is the city’s first industrial zone named after robotics as well as one of the largest eight smart production parks citywide.
At the September 21 conference, Tang Wenkan, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, again stressed the importance of robotics to the city’s bid to develop high-end manufacturing.
“Elevating the level of smart factory construction and accelerating the application of robots are indispensable to the megapolis’s development of high-end manufacturing,” Tang told the audience.
Industrial clusters
Gucun’s robot park, which is home to entrenched industrial leaders Fanuc, Fermi and Speedbot (视比特机器人), has attracted more than 200 robotic and intelligent production businesses to put down roots.
Photo courtesy of Shanghai Robot Park
Since the park’s inception in 2012, various industrial clusters have formed, ranging from the production of robots to smart manufacturing and financial services, media reported.
JUST (佳时特), an automation solution provider headquartered in Jiangxi, said it was drawn to set up operation in the Shanghai park by the ecosystem it represents.
“We hope to relocate the domestic sales and R&D work to Baoshan, in a further bid to cement our tech team and help our firm become bigger and stronger,” said Liu Hua, chairman of JUST, which newly settled down in the robot park.
Another new member of this industrial alliance is Keyinbot (嘉奥科技), a local surgical robot startup, which decided to mass produce its latest homegrown product in the Gucun park.
“We will build a smart surgical robot platform and steadily lure our upstream and downstream partners to develop in Baoshan,” Ma Kewei, president of Keyinbot, at the conference.
Spearheading growth
The park operator is expected to double down on a charm offensive to court companies that play leading roles in their respective fields.
These firms are often counted on to spearhead growth throughout the industrial chain and promote industrial expansion.
Image credit: Unsplash
Shanghai Robot Park has gathered outstanding firms involved in the upper, middle and lower echelons of smart production, with a clear direction and immense potential, said Hou Lin, a managing partner at a fund of fund (FoF) of Shougang Fund.
The fund is a corporate venture arm of Shougang, one of the largest state-owned steel mills in China.
“Shougang Fund is willing to collaborate with the park to construct a mature financial system, improve the financing platform and propel the healthy growth of enterprises,” Hou added.
Shanghai is on a sustained campaign to enhance its competitive edge in robotics. Among many instances, it has set an ambitious goal to elevate its average industrial robot density to 360 units per 10,000 employees by 2025, up from 260 per 10,000 in 2022.
