(Yicai Global) June 10 -- The Chinese unit of German medical technology company Siemens Healthineers has unveiled a new strategy that aims to entirely localize its production in the Asian country.

Siemens Healthineers China will strive to make all its products in China and deepen its innovative research and development based on the market’s needs, the firm said yesterday, adding that it will contribute to the country’s ‘Healthy China’ agenda as a “Chinese company.”

With huge commercial potential and a unique market environment, China has always had great strategic importance to Siemens Healthineers, Elisabeth Staudinger, board member and Asia Pacific regional head, told Yicai Global.

With 80 percent of Siemens Healthineers China’s products already made in the country, the company will gradually increase that, President Jerry Wang told Yicai Global.

The firm also said in a press release that the laboratory diagnostics plant that finished construction in Shanghai at the end of last year will become Siemens Healthineers' first in vitro diagnostic reagent production base in the Asia Pacific. It will mostly produce immune reagents. Its R&D center project is also being advanced, the statement said.

Shanghai and Shenzhen are key manufacturing and export bases for Siemens Healthineers China, Staudinger said. Besides serving the Chinese market, the two factories there also export over half of the company’s medical devices output, she added, noting that both have restarted production.

Since Siemens Shanghai Medical Equipment restarted operations after the Covid-19 outbreak in the city, 500 staff returned to work at the plant, completing orders through hard work, Kong Jun, vice president and general manager, told Yicai Global.

Siemens Healthineers' Magnetom Terra, the first 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner for clinical use, was approved by China’s National Medical Products Administration on June 8, making it the world's first ultra-high field technology device approved by the NMPA and the US Food and Drug Administration, and with CE certification.

Editors: Xu Wei, Futura Costaglione