Wuxi became the first city in Jiangsu province to establish a robotics and intelligent manufacturing association on Jan 20, the Wuxi government announced.

More than 130 companies became the association's first batch of members. At the opening ceremony, nine robotics and intelligent manufacturing enterprises joined forces with 17 traditional manufacturing ones, resulting in a total of 108 million yuan ($16.42 million) in investment.

Li Xin, president of Wuxi Xinje Electric Co., is the chairman of the association. Xinjie specializes in automation development and application. Its welding and stamping robots yielded 350 million yuan in annual turnover last year. Now, Xinjie is preparing to trade on the main board market.

"Robotics and Intelligent manufacturing are the development trend of industries," Li said, adding that they have obvious advantages in standardization.

In Li's view, Wuxi has excellent resources in robotics and intelligent manufacturing, and traditional manufacturing industries have big demands for being revitalized using the most advance technology. Therefore, the association will help traditional enterprises transform.

The association's honorary chairman, Chen Juchang, suggested that Wuxi gives top priority to intelligent manufacturing, as a move to breathe fresh air the manufacturing industry, and develop industry-university-research cooperation to build Wuxi brands in the field.

Edited by Owen Fishwick