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ABB's Extended Operator Workplace. The company says it will continue to make available the right technology to support China. Provided to China Daily

"This plan is about energy efficiency, smart grids, and renewables, and we are ideally positioned to help with the industrial upgrade, as our robot and automation capabilities are already there."

"So while China's GDP growth might not be as high as in the past, the investment in infrastructure, in automation, and in utilities are favoring ABB very strongly."

China needs to focus on less energy consumption per unit of GDP through the increased use of environmentally friendly renewable technologies such as solar and wind, he says.

ABB has also revealed that it has signed a strategic agreement with Chinese company BYD Co Ltd to collaborate on energy storage building technology for grid-connected, micro-grid, solar and marine storage applications.

Officials say ABB's leading products and technology for grid storage, electric vehicle charging and integrated marine systems will be combined with BYD's knowledge in battery technology to address worldwide energy storage requirements.

The collaboration will accelerate the introduction of new solutions for electric-vehicle charging, the fast ramp-up of renewables combined with energy storage in off-grid and on-grid solutions, as well as battery and energy storage solutions for the fast growing marine segment.

BYD is a leading firm specializing in the information technology industry, including rechargeable batteries.

It employs more than 180,000 staff at 12 industrial parks in China and has branches and offices around the world, including in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong.

"We were chosen earlier this year by BYD and Daimler to support the roll-out of the the new electric Denza car, with our leading-edge electric mobility solutions: that's the charging stations that you have on your iPhone," Spiesshofer says.

China is now the trendsetter in such technology and will be the leading country in electric mobility in the years to come, and the move to join forces with BYD is very much a long-term decision, he says.

"Significant government and private sector investments are all aimed in the same direction - to develop electric mobility at high speed.

"That way of partnering with global technology leaders, whether it is on the vehicle side - the partnership between BYD and Daimler is an example - or on the infrastructure side, the capabilities that we bring combined with Chinese partners is a very strong direction."

Besides energy, ABB also attaches great importance to China's automation and robot market and collaborate on innovation projects.

Gu Chunyuan, president of ABB China, highlighted the example of YuMi, a Chinese-built dual-arm robot that was also launched at the London event.

YuMi's capabilities were ideally suited to match the demands of industries that require a lot of small-parts assembly, where robots can work seamlessly alongside human, he said.

With sales of about 37,000 industrial robots last year, China has now overtaken Japan to become the world's biggest buyer for the first time. It is also the fastest-growing market worldwide, with total supply of industrial robots increasing by an average of 36 percent annually for the past five years, the China Robot Industry Alliance says.

In the next decade, China's annual growth in robots is forecast to be about 40 percent a year, industry officials say.

ABB is calling the YuMi the world's first truly collaborative robot. It has been developed to meet the flexible and agile production needs of the consumer electronics industry in the first instance, Gu says.

The project was started after creating an application center for precision engineering in Shanghai. Most of the 10-15 people in the design team were returning Chinese graduates.

The company's latest investment in China is a $300 million Xiamen factory for electrical products to serve domestic and overseas markets, he says.

Spiesshofer predicted China's workforce will peak in the next few years, because of the one-child policy, and then fall.

"At the same time growth is expected to go up, so Yumi is ideally positioned to work in factories side-by-side with Chinese people so that China can increase its productivity and address its labor market challenges.

"We expect to grow this business very strongly. We have been able to grow China ahead of the rest of the ABB portfolio, and we are firmly committed to keep the investments, to educate our people, to train the workforce, and to a future as one of the strongest growing companies in China."

Reuters contributed to this story.

zhangchunayan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/12/2014 page22)

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