Wuxi turns to IoT industry for growth

At Sunan Shuofang International Airport, automatic package sorting equipment can sort 36,000 packages every hour with a 99.99 percent accuracy rate.

Packages of different sizes are placed on a conveyor belt at a speed of two meters per second, before being scanned automatically and then sorted accurately into particular areas.

The equipment, designed by Wayz Intelligent Manufacturing Technology, has been adopted by many of China's leading express and e-commerce firms like Shunfeng, Alibaba and JD.

One of many newly founded internet of things (IoT) firms in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, Wayz has developed rapidly and is expecting a 50 percent increase in sales this year.

Li Gongyan, company representative and researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said sales will reach 600 million yuan ($89 million) in 2019. Its sales in 2017, the second year after it was founded, reached 200 million yuan.

"We've sold more than 200 sets of equipment in less than three years," she said. "We have the confidence of becoming a leading company in the automatic sorting industry, with the rapid development of the city's IoT industry."

Wuxi is home to more than 2,000 IoT companies, whose sales surpassed 263 billion yuan in 2018, up 23.7 percent year-on-year. They have projects in more than 700 cities in 68 countries and regions.

Wuxi has held three World IoT Expos since 2016, and many of the country's leading firms have initiated major high-tech projects in the city, including Huawei, Alibaba and home appliance leader Haier.

The city has established policies to attract top IoT researchers and companies.

It has launched more than 2,000 IoT research projects at provincial level and above, along with about 10,000 patent applications. More than 150,000 people work in the city's IoT industry, including 13,000 high-tech experts.

The Wuxi Scientific and Technological Achievements Fair on Industry-University-Research Cooperation was held from Monday to Tuesday as a part of the 2019 Wuxi Conference of Talents and Innovation.

The fair, aimed at promoting the in-depth integration and transformation of scientific and technological achievement, attracted more than 300 people from about 50 global universities and research institutes.

Wuxi Party secretary Li Xiaomin said at the conference the city attaches great importance to attracting experts who have injected impetus into the city's high-quality development.

"Wuxi is looking forward to strengthening communication and cooperation with outstanding individuals from home and abroad," Li said. "We will provide comprehensive services and support to these people and create a better and more efficient business environment for them to innovate and start careers."

According to an announcement by the conference, about 1,500 projects of high-level talent at home and abroad and 450 new technical achievements of key universities and research institutes will soon be released.