Officials and business leaders lay a foundation stone for a Zhangjiagang Elegant Home-Tech Co R&D center on Feb 20. [Photo/zjgonline.com.cn]

A ceremony was held on Feb 20 in Zhangjiagang, East China’s Jiangsu province, marking the beginning of construction on 53 projects in the city.

The 32 industrial projects and 21 service projects received a total of 47.55 billion yuan ($6.79 billion) in investment.

An environmentally-friendly wooden floor R&D project funded by Zhangjiagang Elegant Home-Tech Co covers an area of 140,000 square meters.

An intelligent manufacturing center and warehouse will be built by introducing advanced production lines from Italy and Japan, as well as unmanned forklift trucks, automatic packing machines and machinery robots.

The sales revenue of the center is expected to reach 2 billion yuan at full production capacity.

According to Shen Guofang, secretary of the CPC Zhangjiagang Committee, the local government has carried out effective measures to ensure that the projects progress smoothly during the epidemic outbreak.

“Relevant departments have been proactive in contacting and helping companies,” said Shen at the ceremony.

“More efforts will be made to enhance the government’s work efficiency and improve the local business environment,” he added.