Advanced manufacturing drives Huizhou's growth

Huizhou, which is located on the east coast of the Pearl River, enjoys unique geographic location due to its close proximity to metropolises such as Shenzhen and Hong Kong. In addition, it has bolstered its local economy, with the city becoming a new growth hub on the east Pearl River.

The regional gross domestic product of Huizhou amounted to 410 billion yuan ($57.8 billion). with a year-on-year increase of 6 percent in 2018, according to the local statistics bureau.

In recent years, the city has been devoting great efforts to developing advanced manufacturing, clustering a batch of well-developed advanced manufacturing companies.

Huizhou EVE Energy, which was established in 2001, is a national high-tech enterprise leading the country in lithium primary battery manufacturing.

The company has been committed to carrying out innovation-driven development. Its annual research and development costs accounted for about 8 to 9 percent of the total sales of the company in 2018.

"Currently the company has owned 1,168 patents and the number keeps climbing," said Sun Bin, vice president of Huizhou EVE Energy.

"As our company's production lines have a high-degree of automation, higher demands will be set for workers at the production lines, so our workers at the production lines need to own degrees of above junior college level to realize smart manufacturing in the company," added Sun.

Desay SV Automotive, which was established in 1986 and headquartered in Huizhou, is one of China's leading automotive electronics companies and has been an active player in the domain of smart cabins. It has set up R&D branches in Nanjing, Chengdu, Singapore, Europe, and Japan.

"The sales volume of our company in 2018 reached 5.4 billion yuan and the investment for R&D accounted for more than 10 percent, which has taken the lead in the world," said Gao Dapeng, general manager of Desay SV Automotive.

"Our company has been running in Huizhou for over 33 years and we have received great support from the local government. We are confident in the local business environment, which makes it convenient for us to attract more talents," said Gao.