Crouched around a whirring machine on the upper floor of Zongwei’s factory in Suzhou, a group of engineers puts China’s next generation of manufacturing equipment through its paces.
The research and development team is one of many across China racing to solve one of the biggest challenges facing its 6mn manufacturers: how to remain competitive as labour costs rise due to a shrinking working-age population.
Zongwei builds automated factory lines, which, unlike their mechanical predecessors that move an assembly line at a constant speed, whisk the product around at different speeds and directions between workstations along a maglev conveyor system. It claims to drastically reduce manufacturing times and counts China Tobacco, electric vehicle maker BYD, and Apple suppliers Foxconn and Luxshare among its clients.