Zurich-based robotics giant ABB expects Chinese electric vehicle makers and SME sector to keep Shanghai plant busy
- Swiss-Swedish company is investing US$150 million in factory
- With an annual capacity of more than 100,000 robots, plant represents ‘quantum leap’ for ABB
ABB Group, the Swiss-Swedish industrial automation and electricity supply technology company, is banking not only on hundreds of electric vehicle start-ups in China, but also millions of small and medium-sized manufacturers in the country, to fill up the order books at a robotics factory it is building in Shanghai.
The Zurich-headquartered company, which also has robotics factories in Sweden and the United States, is betting big on further growth in the demand for automation in China – the world’s largest industrial robotics market since 2013 – as its working population shrinks and labour costs escalate.
It is investing US$150 million in the factory, billed by Ulrich Spiesshofer, its chief executive, as “the most advanced, automated and flexible in the world”. The facility in Kangqiao, a southeastern suburb of Shanghai, will also be bigger than its plants in Europe and the US.
ABB is helping NIO, the Shanghai-based electric car start-up, build a highly automated factory and is providing fast-charging solutions for batteries used in its vehicles, which are key to its success, said Spiesshofer.
“China has more than 400 companies in the electric vehicles sector. There are tremendous opportunities for us to help with the wave of investment in electric vehicles manufacturing,” he told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship, the world’s first fully electric global motorsport series, held in Hong Kong last month.
ABB also expects to tap China’s small and medium-sized enterprises market, where adoption of automation has so far been limited by high costs.