Companies agreed to invest 36.9 billion yuan ($5.4 billion) in Zhuhai's intelligent manufacturing, aviation aircraft, unmanned surface vehicles, and other advanced industries on Dec 17.

Fourteen of the projects are valued at over 1 billion yuan ($145 million) each. They were all announced at the opening ceremony of the 4th Advanced Equipment Manufacturing Investment & Trade Symposium -- West of the Pearl River, which closed in Foshan on Dec 19.

The global imaging solutions leader Lexmark, for instance, will manufacture high-end laser printers in Zhuhai at a cost of 9 billion yuan ($1.3 billion). UBTech, a global AI and humanoid robotic company, plans a 1.5-billion-yuan ($218-million) intelligent industry base. Also coming are the 2-billion-yuan Suntak Electronic Sci-Tech Park from Shenzhen and 1.5-billion-yuan ($218-million) Shenzhen Sun & Lynn Circuits PCB Zhuhai Industrial Park. 

Unmanned Sunbird yachts

Attention was attracted to 32 Zhuhai companies exhibiting 100 products in the city's 3,200-sq-m (3827-sq-yd) display area. The companies constituted an industrial chain highlighting intelligent manufacturing technologies in land, sea, and air.

Gree showcased the high precision of industrial robots with some playing musical instruments. The Gree series covered six-axis industrial, SCARA horizontal multi-joint, DELTA parallel, and palletizing robots. The robots are light and compact giving them flexibility and agility with positioning accuracy of up to .03 mm (.001 inch). They are widely used in assembly, gluing, welding, sorting, transporting, and other fields, according to a company manager.

Gree also displayed the integrated automation solutions of its high-precision graphite processing production line. The line's one-stop provision of production, testing, distribution, and warehousing can reduce costs and increase efficiency.

ABB industrial robots

Other highlights included Zhuhai Seine Technology's J501 series of multi-material color printers, Zhuhai Naruida Technology's meteorological radars self-developed for tornado forecasting, and a 1:5 mockup of the AG600 amphibious plane developed by China Aviation Industry General Aircraft (CAIGA). Zhongxing Intelligent Vehicle also unveiled its first fuel cell buses at the event.

A core and leading area of the advanced equipment manufacturing industry belt on the west bank of the Pearl River Estuary, Zhuhai boasts full-range industries along with upstream and downstream support chains.

From 2015 to 2017, annual investment in equipment manufacture in the city rose from 12.8 billion yuan ($1.86 billion) to 18.9 billion yuan ($2.7 billion), average annual growth rate exceeding 44 percent.

Last year saw 77 equipment manufacturers accredited as High & New-Technology Enterprises in Zhuhai, bringing the total number to 262. They, along with other industry players, contributed 32.9 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) to the value added of the equipment manufacturing industry from January to October.

To date this year, there have been 3,915 patent applications, including 386 for nationals, from Zhuhai's local equipment manufacturing sector, 2,639 of which were certified.

Intelligent manufacturing solutions [Photos by Zhong Fan / Zhuhai Daily]