On November 12, a dozen bulldozers, excavators and transport trucks were shuttling back and forth leveling land on the construction site of Jingzhou Base of Midea's HVAC & Building Technologies Division in Jingzhou Economic & Technological Development Zone (JETDZ). Jingzhou signed the project on October 27, with an investment of 2.1 billion yuan.
On October 20, 2020, Midea Refrigerator New Industry Park was signed with an investment of 3 billion yuan. On November 18, 2020, Midea invested an extra 5 billion yuan to build Midea Washing Machine Jingzhou Industry Park. The two industry parks broke ground in February and March 2021 respectively. Among Midea's five core business sectors, three business divisions have signed agreements with Jingzhou within one year, with a total investment of 10.1 billion yuan. In the coming three years, Midea will achieve total sales of 50 billion yuan, and manufacture 20 million refrigerators, 20 million washing machines and 5 million central air conditioners annually.
The HVAC & Building Technologies Division is one of Midea's five core business sectors. With the building digitalization service platform as the core, the division provides integrated solutions covering HVAC, elevator, building intelligence and energy management. The division has production bases in Shunde where it is headquartered, Hefei and Chongqing.
The division started to select a site for the project in July 2021. After surveying a few cities, they chose Jingzhou. "The services offered by a place concern the sustainability of an enterprise after its settlement," said Wang Zhao. "Jingzhou's business environment has enjoyed a growing reputation in Midea." As Midea's first business division to invest in Jingzhou, Midea Refrigerator achieved an output of 6.7 million units and an output value of 8.3 billion yuan last year. It is almost certain that Midea Refrigerator will achieve an output value of more than 10 billion yuan this year. Over the past 13 years since its entry into Jingzhou, Midea Refrigerator has become China's largest refrigerator manufacturing base.
This year JETDZ tailored an intelligent home appliance industry park for Midea, bringing in 18 supporting projects with an investment of more than 100 million yuan each for upstream and downstream sectors of the industry. Now a "1+36" refrigerator industry cluster has taken shape in JETDZ. After its completion, Midea Refrigerator New Industry Park with an additional investment of 3 billion yuan will contribute a production capacity of 15 million units, an output value of 25 billion yuan and 2,000 jobs annually. In the coming three to five years, the world's largest refrigerator production base will emerge in Jingzhou.
With an investment of 5 billion yuan, a planned annual output of 30 million units and an estimated annual output value of 30 billion yuan, Midea Washing Machine Industry Park has been the largest project of Midea's Laundry Division by investment over the past decade. Planned as a world-class "lighthouse" plant, the park will be built into a sustainable intelligent manufacturing base with an end-to-end delivery network.
Guided by the concept of "bringing in an enterprise, expanding an industry, building a chain and forming a cluster", Jingzhou is heading in the direction of high-end, intelligent and green industrial development. Intelligent manufacturing is becoming a bright symbol of Jingzhou.