Agglomeration effect

Qingdao regards the biomedicine and medical device industry as one of its 24 pillar industrial chains and aims to trigger the innovative vitality of enterprises in an all-round way. 

To date, the Qingdao high-tech zone has introduced more than 150 R&D-based projects including AstraZeneca and the Sinopharm East China Base. The zone is home to 10 innovation platforms above the provincial level for enterprises above designated size and one-third of the market entities in Qingdao's medical and pharmaceutical industry.

In 2022, the revenue generated by the biomedicine and medical device industry in the zone exceeded 8 billion yuan, up 28 percent year-on-year.

Qingdao, Shandong province [Photo/VCG]

AstraZeneca signed an investment cooperation agreement with the zone recently to launch a new $450 million manufacturing and supply base for inhalable aerosols. The base is also planning to build the assembly, packaging and storage plants for two Pressurized Metered Dose Inhalers, or PMDI, as well as labs, offices and other facilities.

Wego International Medical Devices Industrial Park received a total investment of 5 billion yuan and settled in the zone to promote production industrial chains, research and funds.

The zone has also gathered a batch of upstream and downstream enterprises in the precision instruments industry including Hexagon, the world's largest manufacturer of three-coordinate measuring instruments, Qingdao Topscomm Communication Inc and Qingdao AIP Intelligent Instrument Co Ltd.

In 2022, the revenue of the precision instruments industry in the zone exceeded 7 billion yuan, up 30 percent year-on-year.