Automation revolutionizes production, manufacturing
The food processing industry in Dongxihu district of Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, is undergoing a transformation from traditional methods to intelligent production and manufacturing. It has resulted in an increasing number of digital, automatic and environmentally friendly factories being built in the sector.
Twenty rows of shelves, each as tall as a five-story building, move in an orderly manner under computer control. Dozens of machine arms move back and forth, taking boxes of snacks from shelf trays to place them on conveyor belts.
This is the daily scene at an unmanned warehouse invested in by major Chinese snack company Bestore at a Dongxihu industrial park.
The company said the logistics project has a total construction area of 70,000 square meters and it was officially put into operation in August 2017.
Its main duty is to provide sorting and distribution services to Bestore’s offline outlets nationwide.
The unmanned warehouse is a result of the company’s recent efforts to carry out intelligent transformation. “By utilizing digital and information technologies, our central warehouses now use three-dimensional storage and automatic sorting systems. We have also established a logistics network featuring quick response, which can support 150,000 to 200,000 daily shipments during peak times,” the company said.
Bestore will also launch a new factory which is scheduled to open by the end of this year. The new project will have a higher level of automation and its sorting capacity will increase from 80,000 orders to 200,000 orders per day.
The exponential increase in productivity will help Bestore integrate its online and offline channels, the company said.
The food industry, which has developed in Dongxihu since the 1990s, is one of the pillar local industries.
The district now hosts the largest food industry cluster in Central China.
In 2005, Dongxihu started constructing the Wuhan food-processing industrial zone. The zone is adjacent to expressways in the east and north, and a railway in the west. It also neighbors the Wuhan comprehensive bonded logistics park.
The zone is home to more than 60 well-known Chinese and foreign companies, including five Fortune Global 500 companies. It also has 100 small food-processing firms and packaging and printing enterprises.
In 2020, the zone realized 18.5 billion yuan ($2.87 billion) in gross industrial output value and
The company also upgraded its products’ packaging and shop decor, as well as a new slogan to tempt young consumers.”
Zhou Kun, senior executive of Zhouheiya
1.5 billion yuan in tax revenue.
In recent years, Dongxihu has made efforts to attract investment and improve its business environment. It did this to introduce new projects and encourage resident companies to expand and upgrade their facilities.
China Mengniu Dairy is a stalwart of Dongxihu. The company has had three production bases in the district since 1998 and it now has 24 production lines. Since 2015, Mengniu has invested nearly 300 million yuan in intelligent transformation. It has built digital factories to realize the automatic control of production processes and intelligent robot packing and stacking.
As a result, its production efficiency and energy utilization rate have been increased by more than 20 percent and 10 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, the cost of operation and the rate of defective products have been reduced by more than 20 percent each, according to the company.
In September 2020, Mengniu signed another contract with the district to build a leading milk factory in China. The factory is designed to produce yogurt, fresh milk and high-end cheeses. The designed production capacities of the yogurt and cheeses are expected to rank first in Asia.
In Dongxihu, among the rows of square, gray food-processing factories stands a colorful one with buildings of different shapes. It also has a central garden, large fountain and some statues.
This is the factory of Chinese fast-food chain Zhouheiya, a supplier of vacuum-packed marinated duck and related products.
At the factory’s showroom, a large wall is covered with images of the company’s new cartoon characters.
The company’s senior executive Zhou Kun said last year hired a Japanese animation team to create three new logos — a boy Zhou Zhou, a girl Ya Ya and a duck Hei Hei — based on the original logo, a curly haired boy.
“The company also upgraded its products’ packaging and shop decor, as well as a new slogan to tempt young consumers.”
Other efforts include its entry into 10 big e-commerce platforms, such as TikTok and Kuaishou, and developing 20 kinds of new products for online markets.