As a professional interview column of Oceanology Asia (referred to as “OA Ocean Expo”), OA Talk is dedicated to build up an interdisciplinary, cross-field and cross-industry interactive communication platform for the industry, where experts and scholars from marine science and technology industries gather together to share cutting-edge views, capture high-quality information and collide with cooperation opportunities, Experts and scholars from well-known enterprises, universities and research institutes gather together to share cutting-edge views, capture high-quality information and collide with cooperation opportunities.
This is the ninth issue of OA Talk's face-to-face interviews with industry experts, focusing on the localization and standardization of ocean observation and monitoring technologies.
Domestic production leads the future
Standards Promote Development
As an important part of marine science and technology, marine observation and monitoring technology plays a key role in the development of marine resources, early warning of marine disasters, protection of the marine environment and other fields. As a high-tech enterprise covering R&D, production, system integration, operation and maintenance services of water quality monitoring equipment and monitoring data analysis, Shanghai Zeming Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. has actively participated in the formulation of standards for ocean observation and monitoring to promote the development of high-quality, standardized development of the industry and to make contributions to the service of users in various fields of the marine industry.
Interview Guest:
Mr. Jim Mingjun, Chairman of Shanghai Zeming Environmental Technology Co.
Keywords for this issue:
Marine Environmental Detection and Monitoring
Localization of Marine Instruments
Standardization of Marine Environmental Monitoring
Q : What was the opportunity that drove your company to transform from an agent for importing marine monitoring equipment to a domestic research company?
At the beginning of our company, we were mainly engaged in the foreign instrument agency business, and successfully implemented many online water quality monitoring projects in the areas of national 908 project, 102 project, unmanned island project, and salty tidal wave invasion research, etc. Since 2014, we have started the transition to domestic instrument research and development. Since 2014, the company has started to transform and focus on the R&D of domestic instruments. The main driving factor is that during the period when the company was acting as an agent for foreign instruments, the company realized that many foreign instruments have obvious limitations for the unique local environment in China, especially in the Yangtze River Delta region, where seawater has a high sand content, a high concentration of salts, and drastic fluctuations in tidal levels. Therefore, the company formally launched its own R&D program for water quality related instruments.
Q: Can you talk specifically about what new challenges your company has encountered after the transition? What corresponding initiatives have been taken?
After several years of epidemics and the reform of marine organizations, the marine market was in a relatively lagging development in the previous years. In particular, there was a large gap in the field of marine environmental monitoring. Due to the lack of a perfect standardized system to support, some of the equipment has not been fully and effectively used after being put into operation. Since last year, our company has carried out long-term standardized monitoring of water quality buoys in the National Marine Monitoring Center. Whether it is comparative analysis in the laboratory or long-term sea deployment test in Dalian and Sanya, the company's equipment and instruments have fully met the 216 seawater monitoring specifications.
Q: How to enhance the international competitiveness of domestic marine monitoring instruments and equipment?
To realize the breakthrough first need to uphold the long-termism. The development of marine instrumentation is a very long process, which is no different from the laws followed by European and American countries in terms of instrumentation R & D specifications, which need to undergo decades or even hundreds of years of profound accumulation. In addition, China's past standards usually refer to Europe and the United States, but now China is independently constructing a series of standards and norms system, in this process, the initiative of enterprises to participate in the significance of extraordinary. At present, the land water quality standards applied to the marine field has been a significant progress. Finally, domestic enterprises should repeat their own advantages, strengthen localized services, to create exclusive competitiveness.
OA 2025 Ocean Expo will be held on October 22-24, 2025 at Shanghai International Sourcing Convention & Exhibition Center. As an exhibition for the marine technology industry, OA 2025 Ocean Expo will continue to focus on industry hotspots and trends, and build an efficient communication platform for industry insiders.