Midea forms robot joint ventures with Yaskawa

Chinese home appliance maker Midea announced on Tuesday two joint ventures with Japanese robot maker Yaskawa to build service and industrial robots.

Midea will hold a majority stake of 60.1 percent in the company making service robots while Yaskawa will hold the majority stake of 51 percent of the industrial robot-making company.

The ventures will be responsible for research, manufacturing and selling service and industrial robots.

Demand for robots, especially for industrial manufacturing, is rising in China, as the country faces a dwindling labor supply and rising wages.

Southern Chinese province Guangdong, where Midea and the new ventures are based, has announced a 943 billion yuan (152 billion U.S. dollars) initiative to replace human labor with robots across nearly 2,000 large plants in the region.

More than 56,000 industrial robots were sold in China last year, the world's largest robot market. International Federation of Robotics also estimates that China will have more robots operating in production plants than any other country by 2017.