The city of Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, has managed to get some top robot manufacturing companies, such as Norida, thanks to its location, its role as a transportation hub for southern China and its aerospace base, along with its big data industrial development strategy of recent years, bringing advantages for intelligent manufacturing.
The Guizhou Norida Intelligent Technology Co was the first smart robot manufacturer of its kind, with integrated R&D and production, to settle in Guizhou and its chairman, Yue Qiang, notes that, "This is a big opportunity for both Guiyang and the robotics industry over the next decade."
Norida hold many patents and says it wants to promote Guizhou's robotics development thanks to its connections with more than 100 well-known companies, including Tsingtao beer, Coca-Cola, and Hisense and Yue predicts that their sales of palletizing robots could amount to 120 million yuan ($18 million) for 2015, or double that the amount of 2014.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology estimates annual sales of 150,000 industrial robots by 2020 and a 73-percent increase by 2025, with 1.8 million industrial robots in use by that time and Yue says he expects the robotics industry to really take shape in Guiyang during the 13th Five-year plan (2016-20), with sales reaching 500 million yuan.
He goes on to say, "We're making a quick move to seize the China market in this region, which will prepare us for Southeast Asia," and that technological innovation will leads better robots and that they have an R&D team from Japan.
Still, Yue concludes that China lacks the ability to promote and that, although it accounted for a fourth of the robot market worldwide in 2014, only 30-percent of its robots were Chinese products, so, "We're cooperating with overseas R&D firms to innovate in Guizhou and promote Guiyang's intelligent production worldwide."