The Provincial Oceanic Administration and Provincial Development and Reform Commission of Shandong recently announced the 2024 list of Shandong Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Centers, recognizing eight centers across the province. Qingdao accounted for four of them, bringing its total approved provincial innovation centers to eight.

The Shandong Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Centers are designed to harness the leadership of key enterprises in driving the marine industry's growth to consolidate innovation resources for enhancing advanced technologies supply while serving as hubs for new technologies, products, and business models. The goal is to accelerate the development of a competitive modern marine industry system. Qingdao's four newly approved centers—spearheaded by private business enterprises specializing in seawater desalination and utilization, marine pharmaceuticals and bio-products, as well as marine equipment sectors—reflect the city's strong capabilities and progress in marine industries.

Qingdao BCTA Desalination will collaborate with research institutions and leading equipment manufacturers, leveraging its newly approved status as one of Shandong Province's Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Center for seawater desalination and utilization to address critical technological challenges in high-pressure pumps, reverse osmosis membranes, and energy recovery systems and reduce the operational costs of integrating desalinated seawater into municipal water supply networks for Qingdao to become a national model city for seawater desalination.

Qingdao Gather Great Ocean Algae Industry Group (also known as Qingdao Judayang Seaweed), utilizing its newly approved Shandong Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Center status for seaweed functional products supply, will enhance its industry-academia collaboration mechanisms to focus on research and application in areas such as medicinal excipients derived from seaweed polysaccharides and energy-efficient, low-emission seaweed processing to advance the marine bio-pharmaceutical industry further.

Qingdao SunRui Marine Environment Engineering, backed by its newly approved Shandong Provincial Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Center Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Center charter for high-end marine environmental systems applications, is aligning with carbon neutrality and peak emission goals as guided by the International Maritime Organization's greenhouse gas reduction strategy, to focus on developing and refining clean fuel supply systems for ships. By optimizing technologies for various clean fuels and promoting their application in actual vessels, the initiative aims to enhance Shandong and Qingdao's market share and support capacity in the global shipbuilding industry.

Qingdao Sohao Brilliance FD-Tech, leveraging its new Modern Marine Industry Technology Innovation Center approval for marine-specialized food processing and engineering technology applications, plans to integrate resources from the Ministry of Natural Resource's First Institute of Oceanography and the Ocean University of China and focus on advancing critical technologies including genetic engineering, targeted enzymatic hydrolysis, and synthetic biology to develop innovative marine-specialized food products, drive technological progress, upgrade products, and enhance the overall technical level and competitiveness of the marine-specialized food industry.