US firm to make robots in China to tackle labour shortage

A top American robotics company today teamed up with a Chinese counterpart to make 2,000 robots annually in China, which is currently experiencing labour shortages.
Boston-based Rethink Robotics and Hunan-headquartered Cothink Robotics Tech Co. Signed an agreement on Sunday in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, with the city government as a third party.
A Cothink spokesperson said the production base, Rethink's first in China, would have an annual capacity of 2,000 robots.
China is currently the world's largest market for industrial robots, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Scott Eckert, president and CEO of Rethink Robotics, said he foresaw the products would have a broad market in China, as they can replace human workforce in dangerous work or tasks requiring high precision.

Industrial robots are expected to help companies improve production processes by implementing flexible and affordable automation.

Rethink Robotics pioneered the category of collaborative robots and is now focusing on driving innovation and growth in the Asia-Pacific region, starting with China, the company says.
Last month, Rethink announced the availability and global deployment of Sawyer, its new high-performance collaborative robot. The Chinese market is a cornerstone of Rethink's global expansion plan, and Shanghai Electric will be a premier distribution partner for the company as it continues its international growth.
"Chinese manufacturers are facing similar challenges to their counterparts around the world, including rising wages and labour shortages," Eckert, president and CEO of Rethink Robotics had said in November last year.

"In order to stay competitive in a global manufacturing economy, these companies are looking at collaborative robots to help them become more efficient and responsive to customer demand," he had said.
The mounting pressures to deploy automation derive in part from the shrinkage in China's working age population, which started to decline in absolute terms in 2015 and will continue to reduce each year until beyond 2050, the Financial Times had reported last year.
The numbers of workers available for production line work is likely to be further limited by the ageing of the workforce and a general elevation in levels of education attainment throughout society, the report had said.