(Yicai Global) May 23 -- German healthcare equipment provider Siemens Healthineers plans to invest more than CNY1 billion (USD142 million) to construct a second research and production base in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Siemens Healthineers' unit Siemens Shenzhen Magnetic Resonance signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with the government of Shenzhen's Nanshan district on the base, which will develop and make high-end medical equipment, the Erlangen-based firm said yesterday.

“China is of elementary importance for Siemens Healthineers,” Xinhua News Agency reported Chief Executive Bernd Montag as saying. “Through its technology savviness and openness to partnerships and innovation, it is already, and will continue to be, a strategic innovation driver for us locally as well as globally.

“Our decision to invest in a research center as well as in production in Shenzhen bears testament to Shenzhen's innovative capacity and pioneering spirit,” Montag added.

Siemens Healthineers built its first base in Shenzhen in 2002. Since then, it has delivered 8,000 pieces of equipment, mostly magnetic resonance and angiography systems, and over one million medical electronic components to more than 100 countries. Its localization rate has reached about 80 percent.

Magnetic resonance is a key medical imaging equipment with no radiation and is vital in treating tumors and nervous system diseases. China's MR market will nearly triple to CNY24.4 billion (USD3.5 billion) in 2030 from CNY8.9 billion in 2020, with a compound annual growth of about 10 percent, much higher than the global average, per data from China Insights Consultancy.

Editor: Futura Costaglione