Megaprojects form foundation for expansion

Qingdao of East China's Shandong province is pursuing a slew of megaprojects to accelerate the development of its maritime industry.

In recent years, the city has focused on constructing large-scale projects in the marine field while promoting the innovative development of related enterprises and improving the quality and efficiency of the marine industry. Since the start of this year, 90 key projects with a total investment of 200 billion yuan ($27.38 billion) have an ongoing construction rate of 96 percent.

Qingdao Haixi Electric, located in the West Coast New Area, has developed representative products such as deepsea thrusters and ship motors. The company is currently working on a project for the 712th Research Institute of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, aiming to build the nation's largest comprehensive electric power system test laboratory and electric ship propulsion system integrated industrialization base. It includes comprehensive integration facilities, a test laboratory and a large-scale special motor production workshop for ships.

When completed, the project will have the capacity to test 40 megawatt-level comprehensive electric power systems, becoming the largest such facility in China. The production workshop will fully achieve the localization of 40 MW-level large-scale special motors for ships, greatly improving the competitiveness of Qingdao's and even the country's ship and marine equipment products, according to a company manager.

Weichai Group, a Chinese heavy truck and component manufacturer in Shandong, has launched one of the world's most advanced ship research and development and manufacturing technology projects in Qingdao. The group has also invested 1.5 billion yuan in a marine equipment manufacturing center aimed at competing with international first-class ships to create an internationally leading ship R&D and construction industry base.

When it is fully operational, the project will develop and research government service boats, highend vessels and other products suitable for the Chinese market, forming an industry chain and promoting the development of the marine tourism industry, according to manager at the group.

In addition to the ship and marine industry, Qingdao is ramping up the development of its emerging marine drugs and bio-products industries.

Function (Qingdao) Marine Technology, which has focused its business on the development of an Antarctic krill oil industrialization project, has established the largest integrated Antarctic krill high-value utilization research and production base in the country. Its Antarctic krill series products account for 70 percent of the domestic market share, ranking first in the country.

According to Gao Yicheng, chairman of Function, the company will start the second phase of the base project in December, with completion expected in 2026.

It will break through the innovative processing and utilization model of high-value Antarctic krill, and the multidimensional quality evaluation system and quality safety system of the Antarctic krill nutritional standardization, Gao said.

Meanwhile, Qingdao has gone the extra mile to build supporting research platforms for its marine industries. One of the examples, Qingdao's comprehensive offshore test site developed by Qingdao NMEI Group, has become the nation's first standardized offshore test site.

"From conceptual design to product finalization and then to product manufacturing, marine equipment must undergo a large number of sea trials and tests," said Wang Liyu, chairman of NMEI Group. "Qingdao needs to establish a comprehensive and well-equipped, not-for-profit and cost-effective marine testing platform to systematically tackle the fundamental problems of independent and industrialized supporting equipment."

The company said that after the offshore test site project is completed, it will break the constraints of the fragmented and single domestic offshore testing services and become an internationally advanced, domestically leading, and fully open marine equipment testing and certification center, providing important support for breakthroughs in marine equipment technology and the rapid development of the industry.

The international cruise homeport in Qingdao, Shandong province. CHINA DAILY