In Shanghua Village, Lecong Town, Shunde District, Foshan, the scattered industrial buildings will be transformed next year into an intelligent-manufacturing park of modern, high-end factory buildings that brings together intelligent manufacturing and robotics companies from China and abroad.
On May 18, the on-site meeting on upgrading and redeveloping the village-level industrial parks of Lecong Town, Shunde, together with the groundbreaking ceremony of the Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, was held at the Shanghua Industrial Park. With an expected investment of more than RMB 800 million, the project focuses on high-end intelligent equipment manufacturing and robotics and will become a platform for high-end industry in the Foshan Sino-German Industrial Services Zone.
As a benchmark for the redevelopment of village-level industrial parks in Shunde, the project is a new type of pilot in which Lecong redevelops a village-level industrial park through joint development by government and business, and an active exploration of a new model for industrial development in Shunde. It is also the first intelligent-manufacturing park of Midea Real Estate Group Co., Ltd. ("Midea Real Estate") and an important innovation and step forward for the company since it entered the property sector.
Ready to go
An intelligent-manufacturing "chip" for a village-level industrial park
Upgrading and redeveloping village-level industrial parks is this year's number-one project for the Shunde District Party Committee and government. As part of Foshan's central urban area and the location of the core of the Sino-German Industrial Services Zone, Lecong Town is actively joining Foshan's "First Ring Innovation Circle" strategy, responding to the call for a "Technology Shunde" and seizing the opportunity offered by the construction of the Sanlongwan high-end innovation cluster. With the overall goal of becoming "a hub of intelligent innovation and an international small city", it is working to improve planning, create a good environment, make space and attract industry. The Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park project is a result of this.
The Shanghua Industrial Park was built around the 1990s and covers about 282 mu. It was previously used mainly for furniture production, warehousing and logistics, and hardware processing. The area's industries were low-end and unprofitable, and it earned the Shanghua shareholding cooperative only about RMB 9 million a year in rent.
Behind these weak figures, however, was a strong wish among Shanghua villagers to redevelop the site themselves. Tackling such a difficult task depended on the village community playing its role as the main force on the front line. Officials of the Lecong Town Party Committee and government visited the village many times and consulted village committee officials, residents, owners of premises in the park, business owners and others. A consensus was eventually reached to redevelop the Shanghua village-level industrial park under the "three olds" redevelopment policy.
"Our redevelopment plan for the industrial area was approved by a vote of the whole village. It has several benefits for the future of Shanghua Village: it will raise income and at the same time stimulate the village's commerce, its market and its land. Shanghua Village will have a better future," said Zeng Jianxiong, Party Secretary of Shanghua Village.
In June 2017, the Shunde District government included the Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park and nine other demonstration-park projects in industrial development protection zones among the district's key construction projects for 2017. These were the first industrial protection zones designated in Shunde. The project received support from the district's industrial protection fund, which resolved funding issues such as early-stage demolition compensation. On July 10 of that year, the shareholders' meeting of the Shanghua shareholding cooperative voted to approve the redevelopment plan. The plan is characterized by "district–town coordination, leverage from state capital and joint development with private partners", and it broke new ground in consolidating land into contiguous plots, transferring land at scale and developing it intensively.
On February 12, 2018, Foshan Shunde Meiming Real Estate Development Co., Ltd., a company formed jointly by Guangdong Shunkong Urban Investment Real Estate Co., Ltd. (a state-owned enterprise of Shunde District), Lezhi Investment Management Co., Ltd. (a state-owned enterprise of Lecong Town) and Midea Real Estate Group Co., Ltd., won the bid for the land of the Shanghua Industrial Park redevelopment project.
The successful investors have positioned the redevelopment as an intelligent-manufacturing industrial park and an important platform within Foshan's Sanlongwan high-end innovation cluster. Its main sectors will be high-end intelligent equipment manufacturing, robotics, smart logistics and smart healthcare. Investment is expected to exceed RMB 800 million, and the total floor area after redevelopment is expected to exceed 300,000 m². Construction of the first phase is reportedly planned to start in 2018, with completion and occupation in 2019.
Midea Real Estate Group is a member of the Midea family of companies. It is a diversified modern company focused on residential development, with activities in smart technology, cultural tourism, cultural and creative industries, commercial property, green and environmental businesses, industrial parks, prefabricated construction, long-term rental housing and other fields. With smart technology at its core, it has built an integrated business system covering smart homes, smart cultural tourism, smart commercial property and smart industry. According to the manager at Midea Real Estate's Central Guangdong regional company who is responsible for the Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, in the Shunde District government's comprehensive upgrading of its village-level industrial parks Midea Real Estate will draw fully on more than ten years of experience in integrated urban services built around its residential development business, and will bring its brand, channel resources, construction experience and financial strength directly to bear on the upgrading of industrial parks.
Once the Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park is completed and run under a brand, tax revenue per mu is reported to be set to increase more than 25-fold. The project's feasibility study concludes that, once completed, the project will secure steady growth in the village collective's income, improve villagers' living and working environment, help drive the industrial transformation and upgrading of Lecong Town and bring a substantial increase in local tax revenue.
Building the nest to attract the phoenix
Working together on an intelligent robotics industry chain
The operation of industrial real estate is diverse, adaptable and specialized. The Shanghua Industrial Park redevelopment in Lecong Town is positioned for intelligent manufacturing, which closely matches the industry-chain needs of Shunde District as a whole as it develops Industry 4.0 manufacturing.
Shunde lies at the core of the advanced equipment manufacturing belt on the west bank of the Pearl River. In recent years many specialized industrial parks have gathered there, such as the Nanhong Cross-Border E-Commerce Industrial Park and the Shunde Home Appliance E-Commerce Innovation Base (Zone G). Lecong, an important part of Foshan's central urban area, has set itself the development goal of becoming "a hub of intelligent innovation and an international small city".
The Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park in Lecong Town enjoys an exceptional location. It lies within the Sanlongwan high-end innovation cluster, a priority project of the city of Foshan, and adjoins the core area of Tanzhou Bay, close to the Tanzhou Convention and Exhibition Center, the KUKA research and production base and the Sino-German International Cooperation Demonstration Zone for Intelligent Manufacturing.
The Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park will draw on the robotics and intelligent-manufacturing ecosystem of the Foshan Robotics Academy, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Midea and KUKA within the Sino-German Industrial Services Zone to build a center for Sino-German cooperation in intelligent manufacturing, attract advanced equipment manufacturing projects from China and abroad, and foster new drivers of regional economic growth based on innovative business forms and development models in intelligent manufacturing. Building on a mix of activities including production, intelligent R&D and incubation, and industry–university–research cooperation, the park will concentrate on gathering the upstream and downstream service chain of the intelligent-manufacturing sector. It will focus on the production of intelligent machines, chiefly mid-to-high-end, locally produced industrial machines, and, building on experience with industrial robots, will later develop service robots. By creating a benchmark park, it will help to improve the environment and climate for intelligent manufacturing throughout Shunde District.
To achieve these goals, Midea Real Estate will develop the supporting facilities of the Shanghua Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park on the principle of integrating industry, universities and research, and will link up with the proven experience and accumulated resources in industrial incubation of the Sanlongwan high-end innovation cluster and the Tanzhou Bay area. To this end, Midea Real Estate will sign strategic cooperation agreements for the park with companies and institutions including the Foshan Robotics Academy, the South China Robotics Innovation Research Institute, the Guangdong Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Center, the Foshan Shunde Robotics Association, Guangzhou SIE Information, Shanghai Mingjiang Intelligent and Evolut, covering cooperation in project operation, tenant recruitment, capital operations and resource integration.
As the project's investor, Midea Real Estate will make full use of its strengths to set up professional service platforms for tenant recruitment and operation and to bring in specialist park service providers. Private capital that brings its own industrial and financial resources will become an important force in the project's innovation and upgrading. Figures show that Midea Real Estate's contracted sales exceeded RMB 50 billion in 2017, up 139% year on year. As of March 31, 2018, it had established a strategic presence in five regions, the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the Bohai Rim and Sichuan–Chongqing–Yunnan–Guizhou, covering 11 provinces and one municipality, with 127 benchmark projects in 33 cities.
