Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Jurong Innovation District to nurture new growth areas in manufacturing

SINGAPORE — When completed, Jurong Innovation District (JID) will be able to nurture new growth areas in the manufacturing sector, which remains a key pillar of the economy despite its declining share in the Republic’s gross domestic product (GDP), Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) S Iswaran told Parliament yesterday.

SINGAPORE — When completed, Jurong Innovation District (JID) will be able to nurture new growth areas in the manufacturing sector, which remains a key pillar of the economy despite its declining share in the Republic’s gross domestic product (GDP), Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) S Iswaran told Parliament yesterday.

These new areas include advanced manufacturing, robotics, urban solutions, cleantech and smart technologies, said Mr Iswaran, who spoke during the Ministry’s Committee of Supply debate.

The JID, first announced by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat in his Budget speech last month, will be a 600ha innovation district on one of the last large greenfield sites in Singapore, covering Nanyang Technological University (NTU), CleanTech Park and the surrounding areas of Bulim, Bahar and Tengah.

Industrial developer JTC Corporation is the master planner and master developer for JID and will work with other government agencies to develop the district in several phases over the next 20 years. The development planning and engineering work for the first phase of JID is in progress, and is targeted for completion around 2022.

Responding to questions from Members of Parliament — among them Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong GRC) and Mr Yee Chia Hsing (Chua Chu Kang GRC) — on the strategic value of manufacturing and the sector’s importance to Singapore’s economy, Mr Iswaran said real value-added of the sector has increased by S$4.6 billion from 2010 to 2015.

Dr Tan had noted that the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP had fallen slightly from 21.4 per cent in 2010 to 19.8 per cent last year.

JID will be able to host the whole value chain for the manufacturing sector, “including R&D (research and development), design, prototyping, production and supply chain management, with access to NTU’s research and engineering capabilities at the same time”, Mr Iswaran said.

One of the first developments in JID is the JTC LaunchPad @ JID, due to be completed next year. It will house start-ups, incubators and accelerators, as well as include maker’s and co-working spaces, with a focus on advanced manufacturing.

JTC also launched an Open Innovation Call to invite private sector technology owners, especially start-ups, to develop innovative, sustainable infrastructure solutions within the district and bring them to market faster.

Selected proposals will get the opportunity to test the feasibility of their ideas in a real-life environment in the district, thus helping companies reduce business risk.

The Open Innovation Call closed on March 31, and JTC will be announcing the awardees in June.

JID will also be open to other test-bedding activities such as the testing of autonomous vehicles.

In his speech yesterday, Mr Iswaran said the vision for JID is similar to that of one-north in Queenstown, which is a “rich ecosystem” of companies, institutions of higher learning, incubators and start-ups that has yielded many collaborative projects in the biomedical sciences, infocomm, physical sciences and engineering.

“Physical proximity is one way to encourage greater interaction among enterprises, solution providers and researchers that could spark novel ideas and create new products ... JID can do the same for the manufacturing sector,” he said. LEE YEN NEE

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.