Hubei Establishes Biocatalysis and Manufacturing Innovation Center to Boost Future Bio-Manufacturing Industry

As one of the key future industries to be cultivated in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, bio-manufacturing serves as a core engine for promoting green and intelligent transformation in related fields. On April 14, the Department of Science and Technology of Hubei Province officially approved the establishment of the "Hubei Provincial Biocatalysis and Manufacturing Technology Innovation Center", jointly built by Yichang Angel Yeast Co., Ltd. and other relevant enterprises and institutions in Hubei, according to People’s Daily Online.

According to the Chinese government website, the 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes strengthening the research and development of key core technologies in key fields including bio-manufacturing, promoting in-depth integration of technological and industrial innovation. The newly established innovation center will systematically carry out full-chain technological research in bio-manufacturing, specifically addressing key common technical bottlenecks in the industry, and striving to produce a number of major original achievements.

Its core mission is to promote the industrial application of biocatalysis technology in fields such as biomedicine, healthy food, bio-chemical industry and bio-environmental protection, helping Hubei build a domestically leading and core competitive high-end bio-manufacturing industrial cluster. Angel Yeast, as the leading unit of the center, has long been engaged in bio-manufacturing research and development, with strong technological strength and industrial foundation.

A relevant person in charge of the leading unit of the center said that they will improve the collaborative mechanism of "enterprise leadership, university support, multi-party participation and market-oriented operation". The center will unite multiple forces including universities, scientific research institutes and key upstream and downstream enterprises in the province to build an innovation platform integrating technological research and development, pilot-scale amplification and achievement transformation.

It will gather innovative talents at home and abroad, establish scientific and standardized management and operation mechanisms as well as intellectual property sharing mechanisms. The center will focus on building an innovation system "with biocatalysis technology as the source, the new generation of high-version cell factories as the core, and intelligent manufacturing engineering amplification key technologies and industrial transformation as the traction", according to China Science Daily.

The person in charge further stated that the innovation center will be built into a technology source, talent gathering place and achievement transformation base in Hubei’s bio-manufacturing field, promoting the all-round upgrading of Hubei’s bio-manufacturing industry towards "technology-led, green and low-carbon, and high-value-added". It will form a modern bio-manufacturing industrial ecology with independent and controllable industrial chain, in-depth integration of innovation chain and continuous improvement of value chain.

It is estimated that the center will drive the output value of related industries to increase by more than 50 billion yuan, forging an important growth pole leading future development. This initiative not only responds to the national 15th Five-Year Plan’s deployment for bio-manufacturing, but also injects strong momentum into Hubei’s high-quality economic development and the cultivation of new quality productive forces.