The material industry is the basic industry of the national economy and its position is very important. Among them, new materials are the forerunner of the development of the materials industry and the focus of competition among countries. China has elevated it to the height of its national strategy. Currently, Shanghai has also identified advanced materials as one of the six key industries to be developed during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.

Recently, a plan related to the future development of Shanghai's new materials industry-the "Three-year Action Plan for Consolidating the Foundation and Promoting the High-quality Development of the Advanced Materials Industry in the City (2021-2023)" has been officially issued.

According to this action plan, Shanghai will strive to achieve 300 billion yuan in the scale of Shanghai’s new materials industry in three years, with an output value accounting for more than 45% of the total output value of the raw material industry, and launch 100 key demonstration applications, and cultivate 3-5 billion-level enterprises. Leading enterprises in the industry, 20 leading enterprises in the 1 billion-level segment and 50 high-growth innovative enterprises. By then, Shanghai will basically build a new material industry development pattern featuring outstanding innovation capabilities, significant industrial energy levels, accelerated demonstration applications, and complete industrial ecology. Some industry sectors will form an overall advantage in participating in international competition.

Shanghai's confidence

The data shows that in 2020, the total output value of Shanghai's new material regulations is 266.3 billion yuan, an increase of 10.8% year-on-year, and the average annual growth rate during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period is 6.2%. The proportion of the output value of Shanghai's strategic emerging industries is stable at about 20%. Basically establish an important support position for strategic emerging industries. Of course, the challenges are not small. Although Shanghai has certain leading advantages in the research and application of advanced materials, there are also development shortcomings such as low conversion rate of innovation achievements, shortage of factor resources, and high operating costs. At the same time, advanced materials have the industry characteristics of three highs and three longs, that is, high investment, high difficulty, high threshold, long research cycle, long verification cycle, and long application cycle, which require long-term determination.

Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said that in the next three years, Shanghai will clear the chain of "research and trial production" of new materials, and effectively improve the overall level and efficiency of the industrial chain. At the same time, aiming at the high end of the industry, we will strive to promote breakthroughs in key materials in the fields of integrated circuits and aerospace, and consolidate and enhance the overall advantages of advanced materials in the fields of biomedicine, high-end equipment, and new energy.

In order to achieve the above goals, the action plan also provides a path to achieve based on three key areas and focus on four special actions.

The three key areas are: transformation and upgrading of advanced basic materials, focusing on the transformation and upgrading of basic materials such as metals and chemicals, realizing the optimization of variety structure, improving quality stability and reducing production costs, and comprehensively improving the industrial energy level and core competitiveness; strengthening the key to guarantee Strategic materials, focusing on key areas such as integrated circuits, biomedicine, high-end equipment, aerospace, new energy, and accelerating the research and large-scale application of key raw materials, core component materials, and process materials, and gradually improving the comprehensive support capability of the industrial chain; Develop and expand cutting-edge emerging materials, focusing on high-precision new materials such as high-temperature superconductors, graphene, additive manufacturing, and disruptive technological innovations, and strive to build first-mover advantages and seize the commanding heights of future industry competition.

The four special actions include focusing on improving the ability of innovative sources, vigorously advancing the engineering stage to make up for shortcomings, accelerating the construction of advantageous industrial clusters and strengthening the application Industrialization and application integration will speed up the construction of a high-quality industrial ecosystem featuring collaborative innovation, openness and integration.

Regarding the construction of industry clusters that have attracted much attention, the action plan proposes to build two 100 billion-level industrial clusters of new chemical materials and advanced metal materials based on the two major areas of Hangzhou Bay North Bank and Baoshan Special Metal Materials Base with the Shanghai Chemical Industry District as the core. Relying on new material characteristic parks such as Super New Materials, Carbon Valley Green Bay, New Chemical Materials, and Electronic Chemicals Zone, strengthen the investment promotion of characteristic industries, and accelerate the formation of an advanced material industry chain integrating the development of upstream, midstream and downstream; relying on hydrogen energy ports, large Featured parks such as airplanes, one valley and one park, form tens of billions of industrial clusters such as lightweight materials for automobiles and aviation, new energy materials, advanced ceramics for high-end equipment, and artificial crystals. Editor/He Yuting