Xiangzhou District, Zhuhai

The Xiangzhou government has served leading intelligent equipment manufacturers with a strong combination of financial and policy support, seeing the industry hit 56 billion yuan ($8.1 billion) in production value last year, up 11.8 percent year-on-year.

The district of Xiangzhou in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province has always eyed development trends drawing on economic upgrade opportunities from the "Internet Plus" and "Made in China 2025" initiatives. Now focused on high-end technological industries, the district seeks breakthroughs in its intelligent manufacturing sector.

Home to a total of 163 competitive intelligent equipment manufacturing enterprises, Xiangzhou has established an industry chain from R&D and manufacturing to application.

Robots developed by Gree [Photo by Cheng Lin / Zhuhai Daily]

Best intelligent production 

The intelligent manufacturing enterprises in Xiangzhou have been bolstered and led by Gree Intelligent Equipment, established in 2013 by Gree Electric Appliances, an international electric household appliance manufacturer headquartered in Zhuhai. Now aimed at industrial robots and automation equipment, the company has designed, manufactured and sold almost 100 product specifications across more than 10 fields, such as automatic guided vehicles (AGV) and numerically-controlled machine tools.

Gree's three research bases in Zhuhai have added to a total of 3,000 sets of equipment manufactured by Gree from 2013 to 2015, the product sales of which amounted to more than 800 million yuan ($115.9 million).

Gree Intelligent Equipment was invited by authorities to participate in the national standard setting of the robotics and automation sector in 2015. 　

A completely automatic production line built by Gree in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, is another example of the combination of automation and robotics. The whole process from core components manufacturing, welding, to assembling and testing is done by intelligent robots alone. Over the years, such trials have reduced labor from 90,000 to 60,000 in Gree's internal production.

Industrial robots work on production lines. [Photo by Cheng Lin / Zhuhai Daily]

Specialized high-technology 

Zhuhai Xiang Rui Intelligent Technology has poured a large sum of money into technology research since it was established in 2005. The latest pasting machine it has developed uses maglev technology and is aimed at increasing the efficiency of flexible circuit board production. It can move up to 43 meters per second and complete 4,000 revolutions of pasting within an hour, equivalent to the workload of 30 workers.

According to the company's general manager Chen Lianghua, the motor is the first of its kind in China. The price is fixed at 500,000 yuan ($72,464) and has already received hundreds of orders before officially being launched on the market this April.

"We used to do traditional business, but since we took transitiones to intelligent manufacturing in 2011 more progress has been achieved," said Chen.

Investors inspect intelligent robotics equipment in Xiangzhou District. [Photo by Cheng Lin / Zhuhai Daily]

International first-class technology 

The latest SR series of auto insertion machines self-developed by Zhuhai Zhixin Automation Technology (FACC) in 2016 has won acknowledgement from both Huawei, leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, and Midea, Chinese electrical appliance manufacturer.

They also created the world's first SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm) which uses graphical programming software to make the world's best SCARA robots.

"We want to sell 1,000 robots this year to become one of the top 10 sellers in the domestic industry," said Fan Xiuguang, the company's general manager. 

Favorable business environment 

To support business growth has always been high on the Xiangzhou government's work agenda, providing preferential policies, integrated services, subsidies and rewards.

The Management Methods of Funds in the Advanced Intelligent Equipment Manufacturing Industry of Xiangzhou District stipulates that special funding totaling 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) will be allocated to related enterprises or projects from 2015 to 2017. Other issued measures cover additional aspects, such as corporate financing and talent introduction.

The government will also take action to shoulder the responsibility of addressing issues arising from the growth of local equipment manufacturing enterprises, with tailor-designed services.