14 Catalan companies and entities have traveled to China this week to get to know the country's industry 4.0 ecosystem, as well as to analyze good practices and outstanding innovations from this market and, potentially, be able to apply them in Catalonia. Specifically, the Catalan delegation's travel agenda has focused on the cities of Shenzhen, considered the main innovation cluster in the world, Shanghai, with prospecting visits and meetings with companies and infrastructures specialized in robotics and artificial intelligence, and Suzhou, an emerging ecosystem of smart manufacturing and life sciences.

It is a business mission organized by ACCIÓ - the agency for the competitiveness of the company of the Department of Enterprise and Work -, from the headquarters and through the Foreign Trade and Investment Offices in China. The Catalan delegation is made up of companies in the field of industrial manufacturing (metal stamping, 3D printing...), as well as technology suppliers: Cashkeeper, the Saltó Group, Forminsa, General Servei, Intech3D, Meleghy Automotive, Nexiona, Nutai, Saplex, Sedal, Some and Tai Smart Factory, in addition to the College of Industrial Engineers of Catalonia and the Eurecat technology center.

In Shenzhen, among the most outstanding visits, the fifteen Catalan companies and entities got to know the Seeed Studio-Agile Manufacturing Center, a center that combines modular production with a wind tunnel laboratory equipped with cutting-edge technology to carry out performance tests and complex simulations, in addition to the E-hub, another center with incubation and acceleration programs and industrial facilities in the field of Industry 4.0. The delegation was also able to meet representatives of Tencent, one of the world's leading technology companies, creator of WeChat, as well as BYD, one of the first manufacturers of electric vehicles and batteries in China; Ubtech Robotics, a world leader in robotics that has developed humanoid industrial and service robots, and Unilumin, one of the leading Chinese companies specializing in LED technology and smart lighting solutions, among others.

In Shanghai, the delegation visited the Zhangjiang AI Robot Valley, within the Zhangjiang Science City, one of the region's most active platforms in Industry 4.0. Its ecosystem includes smart manufacturing, collaborative robotics, autonomous systems, IoT and data analysis. At its facilities, they visited the company Fourier Intelligence. In addition, the delegation also visited the company SenseTime, as well as the Shanghai Embodied Intelligence Innovation Center, a hub of reference in artificial intelligence, among others.

During the trip, Catalan companies and entities also participated in a round table in Suzhou with Chinese companies in these technologies at the Suzhou Industrial Park, one of the main industrial parks in China. They also got to know the facilities of Elite Robots, a leading manufacturer of collaborative robots (cobots) and of Beiren Smart Manufacturing Technology, an integrator of industrial robotic systems.

Artificial intelligence is a technology that Chinese companies lead on a global scale. Thus, 20% of the main companies dedicated to AI on an international scale are Chinese, as is the case with the Alibaba group, Baidu, ByteDance or Tencent. At the same time, China also has 30% of the main robotics companies worldwide, with Estun Automation, Roborock or Ubtech. In addition, China accounts for 51% of new industrial robots installed each year.

According to a study by ACCIÓ, there are already 1,447 companies specialized in Industry 4.0 in Catalonia, a figure that has increased by 30.2% since 2021, the last time this field was X-rayed. These companies invoice an aggregate of 7,197 million euros (+29.3%), so that the business volume of this industry would already be equivalent to 2.6% of the Catalan GDP. In total, they employ more than 37,200 people (+41%). It is a sector open to the world: 36.8% are exporting companies and 16.9% are subsidiaries of companies of foreign origin.

More than a quarter (27.5%) of these companies are less than 10 years old, while 14% are startups. In fact, 62% of the 2,285 startups that currently exist in Catalonia, according to ACCIÓ data, work with technologies linked to Industry 4.0. Of particular note is the 29% of emerging companies that use artificial intelligence and big data as their main technology, and also the 14% that work with sensors and the cloud.

According to a study by ACCIÓ, there are already 1,447 companies specialized in Industry 4.0 in Catalonia.