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GBS outperforms the higher education sector across all seven themes in National Student Survey 2026

LONDON, July 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Global Banking School (GBS) has once again outperformed the UK higher education sector across all seven core themes of the 2026 National Student Survey (NSS), highlighting its continued commitment to delivering an outstanding student experience.

GBS Student Satisfaction Ratings 2026
GBS Student Satisfaction Ratings 2026

Published today by the Office for Students (OfS), the latest NSS results reflect GBS’s continued focus on high-quality teaching, academic support and student success, with consistently high levels of student satisfaction and strong year-on-year performance.

The 2026 results for GBS are based on 6,488 published student responses – an increase of 1,087 responses compared with 2025, providing an even stronger and more representative picture of the student experience at GBS.

The results come at a particularly significant time for GBS, as it celebrates its 2026 graduation ceremonies this month across Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and London. Six thousand graduates are marking the successful completion of their studies, including in sectors vital to the UK economy, such as construction management, digital technology and health and social care.

GBS outperformed the sector average across all seven NSS themes, with the highest satisfaction scores were achieved in Teaching on my Course and Academic Support, both recording 92.9% student satisfaction.

James Kennedy, CEO of GBS, said: “We are incredibly proud of these results and what they represent. They reflect the dedication of our students, the commitment of our academic and professional services colleagues, and our shared focus on providing an outstanding student experience.

“As we celebrate our graduation ceremonies across Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and London this month, it is particularly rewarding to see our students recognise the quality of their experience at GBS. While these results are something to celebrate, they also inspire us to keep listening to our students and continually enhancing every aspect of the education and support we provide.”

GBS offers flexible, career-focused higher education programmes designed to meet the needs of today’s learners, many of whom balance their studies alongside jobs, family responsibilities and running their own businesses. Through industry-relevant courses delivered across its campuses in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, GBS continues to widen participation to higher education while equipping students with the knowledge, skills and confidence to succeed in their chosen careers.

The 2026 NSS results underline GBS’s commitment to delivering an outstanding student experience and to continually enhancing teaching, learning and student support.

Notes to Editors

  • The National Student Survey (NSS) is an annual survey that gathers feedback from eligible students across UK higher education providers on the quality of their academic experience.
  • The 2026 GBS results are based on 6,488 published student responses, with a publication response rate of 81.2%.
  • Global Banking School (GBS) is a higher education provider with campuses in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, delivering career-focused programmes in partnership with respected UK universities.

MicroCloud Hologram Inc. Practical Approximate Quantum Multiplier Achieves Low-Depth High-Fidelity Computation

SHENZHEN, China, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — MicroCloud Hologram Inc. (NASDAQ: HOLO), (“HOLO” or the “Company”), a technology service provider, has made an important breakthrough centered on the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) environment — the practical approximate quantum multiplier technology. This technology takes approximate computing as its core idea and conducts systematic optimization targeting the two key performance bottlenecks of quantum circuit depth and T-gate count, providing a feasible path that balances efficiency and precision for current noisy quantum devices.

HOLO first started from the most basic arithmetic unit — the adder — and performed a structural reconstruction of the traditional quantum adder circuit. Standard quantum adders usually rely on a bit-by-bit carry propagation mechanism, with circuit depth growing linearly with the number of input bits and requiring a large number of T gates to implement non-Clifford operations. In the newly proposed approximate adder, by weakening the carry precision of some low-weight bits and truncating or simplifying the originally strictly executed carry chain, a constant-depth (O(1)) circuit structure is achieved. This design is not a simple deletion of logic, but ensures through probability analysis and error modeling that the impact of errors on the overall computation remains within an acceptable range.

At the specific implementation level, the technology proposes four approximate adder circuits with different precision levels. These circuits introduce parameterized control mechanisms during design, allowing users to flexibly choose between precision and resource consumption according to specific application requirements. For example, in application scenarios with low error sensitivity, a highly compressed version of the adder can be selected to achieve extremely low circuit depth and T-gate count; while in scenarios requiring higher computational precision, a more complete carry path can be enabled to improve result accuracy. This adjustable precision design concept enables quantum arithmetic modules to possess performance gear characteristics similar to those in classical computing for the first time.

After completing the construction of the approximate adder, HOLO further used it as a core module to build a complete approximate quantum multiplier. Unlike traditional multipliers that rely on multi-stage addition accumulation structures, this multiplier achieves significant simplification of the overall circuit structure by optimizing some product generation paths and combining them with approximate addition units. Particularly in terms of T-gate count, the technology significantly reduces implementation costs by decreasing the number of high-cost non-Clifford gates used. This is especially important in current quantum hardware architectures, because T gates typically require complex fault-tolerant encoding and magic state distillation processes to implement, with resource overhead far higher than that of Clifford gates.

It is worth noting that this approximate multiplier outperforms existing mainstream quantum multiplier schemes in both key metrics of depth and T-count. The reduction in circuit depth means that quantum states are exposed to the noisy environment for a shorter time during evolution, thereby reducing the impact of decoherence; while the reduction in the number of T gates directly lowers the cumulative risk of gate operation errors. This dual optimization enables the multiplier to achieve a higher execution success rate on actual NISQ devices.

To verify the practical effectiveness of this technology, HOLO conducted tests on various quantum simulation environments and real quantum hardware. The experimental results show that, under the same input scale, although the approximate multiplier exhibits slight deviations in result precision, the overall error distribution presents controllable characteristics without systematic bias. At the same time, due to the significant reduction in circuit depth, the fidelity of the final output results is actually superior to that of traditional exact multipliers. This phenomenon indicates that, in noise-dominated NISQ environments, moderate approximation can instead improve overall computational quality.

Further analysis shows that this technology has broad potential in error-tolerant applications. For example, in quantum machine learning tasks, the model itself has certain robustness to small perturbations in input data, so the approximate multiplier can fully replace exact arithmetic modules, thereby significantly reducing training costs. In quantum optimization problems, the objective function usually has smooth characteristics, and local errors do not significantly affect the search process for the global optimal solution, which also provides application space for approximate computing.

From an engineering implementation perspective, this technology also possesses good scalability. Since its core structure is based on a modular adder design, it can be easily integrated into more complex quantum arithmetic systems, such as quantum dividers, exponential operation modules, and polynomial computation circuits. In addition, the design is compatible with existing quantum compilation frameworks and can be directly mapped for execution on mainstream quantum hardware platforms without requiring additional hardware support.

At a more macroscopic level, this technology reflects an important development trend: quantum algorithm design is shifting from theoretical optimality to engineering usability. In the past, research focus was often on the asymptotic advantages of algorithm complexity, but now, under hardware-constrained real-world conditions, how to reduce resource consumption and improve execution success rate is becoming a more critical evaluation criterion. The introduction of approximate computing is a typical embodiment of this shift.

In the future, this technology is expected to become an important component in building practical quantum software stacks. As the scale of quantum hardware gradually expands and algorithm complexity continues to increase, the performance requirements for underlying arithmetic modules will also keep rising. Approximate computing strategies can not only be applied to multiplication operations but can also be extended to a wider range of quantum logic designs, thereby forming a complete set of low-resource quantum computing methodologies.

HOLO’s practical approximate quantum multiplier technology for NISQ devices not only achieves breakthroughs in technical indicators but also provides a new direction of thinking at the methodological level. It demonstrates that, in the current transitional stage of quantum computing development, the limitations caused by insufficient hardware can be effectively compensated by introducing cross-disciplinary ideas and performing engineering optimizations. This practicality-oriented innovation path may become an important driving force for advancing quantum computing from the laboratory to industrial applications.

About MicroCloud Hologram Inc.

MicroCloud Hologram Inc. (NASDAQ: HOLO) is committed to the research and development and application of holographic technology. Its holographic technology services include holographic light detection and ranging (LiDAR) solutions based on holographic technology, holographic LiDAR point cloud algorithm architecture design, technical holographic imaging solutions, holographic LiDAR sensor chip design, and holographic vehicle intelligent vision technology, providing services to customers offering holographic advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS). MicroCloud Hologram Inc. provides holographic technology services to global customers. MicroCloud Hologram Inc. also provides holographic digital twin technology services and owns proprietary holographic digital twin technology resource libraries. Its holographic digital twin technology resource library utilizes a combination of holographic digital twin software, digital content, space data-driven data science, holographic digital cloud algorithms, and holographic 3D capture technology to capture shapes and objects in 3D holographic form. MicroCloud Hologram Inc. focuses on the development of quantum computing and quantum holography. With cash reserves exceeding 390 million USD, the company plans to invest over 400 million USD in blockchain development, quantum computing R&D, quantum holography technology, as well as in the development of derivatives and technologies in cutting-edge fields such as AI, AR, and more. MicroCloud Hologram Inc.’s goal is to become a global leader in quantum holography and quantum computing technologies. 

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. When the Company uses words such as “may,” “will,” “intend,” “should,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “project,” “estimate,” or similar expressions that do not relate solely to historical matters, it is making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results to differ materially from the Company’s expectations discussed in the forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, the following: the Company’s goals and strategies; the Company’s future business development; product and service demand and acceptance; changes in technology; economic conditions; reputation and brand; the impact of competition and pricing; government regulations; fluctuations in general economic; financial condition and results of operations; the expected growth of the holographic industry and business conditions in China and the international markets the Company plans to serve and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing and other risks contained in reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including the Company’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and current report on Form 6-K and its subsequent filings. For these reasons, among others, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional factors are discussed in the Company’s filings with the SEC, which are available for review at www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof.

 

Relativity Names Chris Brown as President to Advance Its AI Platform for Legal Data Intelligence

CHICAGO, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Relativity, a legal data intelligence company, today announced that Chris Brown has been named the company’s president, effective July 13. Brown, who joined as chief product officer in 2018, steps into the role to further advance the company’s AI platform for legal data intelligence, expand the legal work it supports, and bring it to legal professionals where and how they work.


“Chris brings the agility and grit to meet this moment of AI transformation,” said Phil Saunders, CEO of Relativity. “We’ve spent years building the data foundation, the governance and the agentic capabilities behind our platform, and I believe Chris is the right leader to shift us into high gear, to elevate Relativity’s system of action, reach further into the surfaces where legal work happens and make it easier for legal teams to engage directly with their data.”

Brown brings more than 25 years of experience building and scaling digital platforms across complex consumer and enterprise markets, with a career-long focus on shaping customer experiences through applied AI and data-driven systems. Under his leadership, Relativity has built the AI platform for the industry’s most consequential legal work: hundreds of thousands of users around the globe rely on it for litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, information requests, data breach responses and more, with 93 petabytes of legal data under management as of April 2026.

As president, Brown will continue to lead Relativity’s product organization while adding marketing and technology partnerships to his scope, uniting how Relativity builds, how it goes to market and who it builds alongside. His immediate priorities include integrating Gavel, acquired in June 2026 to bring Relativity directly into Microsoft Word; expanding the governed MCP integrations that let leading AI assistants such as Claude orchestrate matters and workflows inside RelativityOne; and scaling aiR across the full range of legal work the platform serves.

“I could not be more excited to step into this role,” said Brown. “Bringing product, marketing and technology partnerships together lets us move faster and think as one about where legal work is going. I believe what we’ve built has already changed how legal work gets done, and the fullest version of that vision is still ahead: legal practitioners asking questions, exploring evidence and drafting work product, all in one simple and intuitive flow, with AI they can trust.”

Before Relativity, Brown was CEO of Kapow Events, which he led through its acquisition by Cvent. He previously spent close to a decade at Orbitz Worldwide as chief product officer, where he helped build a global travel platform and a suite of award-winning, AI-powered mobile applications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois, where he currently serves on the Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumni Board as its president.

Chief Marketing Officer Cristina Rossman is departing Relativity after more than six years with the company. She will remain in an advisory capacity through the end of the year to help support a smooth transition. During her time at Relativity, Rossman scaled RelFest, the company’s annual customer and partner conference, into one of the legal technology industry’s most influential events. She launched the AI Visionaries program, elevating industry dialogue and accelerating the responsible adoption of AI across the legal sector. At a seminal moment for the industry, Rossman’s leadership helped cement Relativity’s position as a leader in legal data intelligence.

About Relativity 
Relativity is a leading legal data intelligence company that builds technology to help users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Its extensible, AI cloud platform, RelativityOne, transforms complex data into actionable insights at massive scale for litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, data breach responses, and other legal use cases. The world’s largest law firms and corporations, government agencies, and a robust network of channel partners rely on Relativity’s legal AI software to securely surface and manage the most relevant and impactful information in their matters. The company also expands access to technology by providing its platform at no cost to academic institutions through its Relativity Academic program and to organizations supporting pro bono legal work through its Justice for Change initiative. 

CONTACT: PR@relativity.com

FP Markets: The era of forward guidance coming to an end

LIMASSOL, Cyprus, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The European Central Bank (ECB) Sintra forum recently took place between 29 June and 1 July, and welcomed several key central banking officials who each steered clear of previewing where interest rates are headed.

Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Kevin Warsh, ECB President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England (BoE) Governor Andrew Bailey, and Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem presented a united front against forward guidance, calling for a coordinated rethink of how they engage with markets.

Warsh – a longtime advocate of Fed reform – explicitly declined to offer guidance at his first press conference as Chairman on 17 June and further buried that idea at the ECB forum. He noted that pre committing to a particular path leaves the central bank in a difficult position when conditions shift – a view shared by many of his global peers.

ECB’s Lagarde expressed similar reservations, saying she had felt ‘bound and compelled’ by guidance in the past. BoE’s Bailey echoed Lagarde’s concern, stating that ‘forward guidance becomes quite problematic over time’, and added that it is ‘much easier to put in place than it is to take away’. BoC’s Macklem joined his peers, shifting towards the view that giving markets a highly prescriptive runway is no longer viable.

Although there was consensus, Lagarde stated that the ECB’s shift would offer greater transparency on how the central bank interprets incoming data, rather than an outright shift away from guidance – a practice she referred to as ‘framework guidance’.

FP Markets Chief Market Analyst Aaron Hill commented: ‘The move away from explicit forward guidance that I – and many investors – have become accustomed to over the years means that we have effectively reverted from a Bernanke transparency framework to a Greenspan era. With policymakers adopting this new way of communicating, market participants will be left with a situation in which the focus shifts to raw data. Naturally, in the absence of guidance, we will have to guess how a central bank may react to incoming data, which will increase volatility around tier-1 event risk’.

About FP Markets:

FP Markets is a global, multi-regulated, award-winning broker established in Sydney, Australia in 2005. The broker offers 10,000+ CFD instruments across seven asset classes, available on industry-leading platforms including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, TradingView, and cTrader.

FP Markets’ regulatory presence includes the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Seychelles, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) of South Africa, and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) of Kenya.

For more information, visit www.fpmarkets.com

TraceLink Earns Fourth Consecutive Merit Award for Transforming Supply Chain Operations with the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model

Recognition in the Supply Chain Excellence category affirms TraceLink’s role in helping life sciences and healthcare companies improve productivity, resilience, and business performance

Summary
TraceLink earned its fourth consecutive Merit Award, receiving 2026 recognition in the Supply Chain Excellence category for advancing the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model. The award underscores TraceLink’s continued leadership in helping life sciences and healthcare companies improve productivity, resilience, and business performance.

BOSTON, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TraceLink, the world’s largest Agentic Business Network for the life sciences and healthcare supply chain, today announced that it has earned its fourth consecutive Merit Award—and its first Merit Award for Business—receiving 2026 recognition in the Supply Chain Excellence category. The award recognizes TraceLink’s leadership in powering the transformation to the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model. The model unlocks a human-agent workforce where human teams and governed OPUS Agents perform specialized operational work to improve business performance and patient outcomes.

The Merit Awards honor organizations that contribute to the continued growth and advancement of the industries and markets they serve. TraceLink was recognized for advancing an operating model purpose-built for the realities of life sciences, where regulated products, complex partner ecosystems, supply assurance, and patient outcomes depend on reliable coordination across the supply network.

“Earning a Merit Award for the fourth year reflects both the pace of innovation at TraceLink and our customers’ commitment to transforming how supply chain work is performed,” said Shabbir Dahod, President and CEO of TraceLink. “As the industry moves beyond digitalizing transactions toward governed human-agent collaboration, the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model provides the trusted foundation organizations need to improve productivity, resilience, and business performance.”

Driving Supply Chain Performance with Governed OPUS Agents
At the center of the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model are OPUS Agents, TraceLink’s no-code, enterprise vertical AI agents for the life sciences and healthcare supply chain.

OPUS Agents operate as permissioned participants within multienterprise supply chain processes. Organizations define their objectives, permissions, decision boundaries, and governance policies while maintaining human oversight and full auditability.

This governance enables human teams and OPUS Agents to perform operational work together with greater speed, consistency, and control, driving measurable improvements in productivity, inventory, working capital, service, compliance, and resilience.

Built on the Integrate-Once™ Agentic Business Network
Built on the Integrate-Once™ Agentic Business Network, the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model gives organizations trusted operational context across trading partners, transactions, inventory, production, logistics, and commercial operations.

This context enables humans and OPUS Agents to coordinate specialized work across company boundaries, helping organizations improve responsiveness, reduce manual effort, strengthen supply assurance, and operate with greater resilience.

The recognition reflects a broader industry shift. Life sciences and healthcare companies are moving from digitalizing transactions to digitalizing how supply chain work is performed through governed human-agent collaboration.

Learn more about how TraceLink enables the transformation to the Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model.

About TraceLink
TraceLink powers the transformation to an Agentic Supply Chain Operating Model for life sciences and healthcare by combining human expertise with agentic work across the end-to-end supply network.

Through Agentic Business Processes, Agentic Control Towers, the Integrate-Once™ Agentic Business Network, and governed OPUS Agents, TraceLink helps companies improve productivity, service, inventory, working capital, cost, compliance, quality, resilience, and revenue performance.

Powered by the OPUS Platform and the world’s largest Agentic Business Network, which links more than 315,000 authenticated business entities and hundreds of billions of annual supply chain transactions, TraceLink enables companies to digitalize business transactions, create trusted operational context, and perform work across multienterprise supply chain processes with greater speed, intelligence, control, and accountability.

Learn more at www.tracelink.com.

About the Merit Awards
The Merit Awards are dedicated to recognizing global excellence across industries and markets. With a focus on innovation, leadership, and measurable results, the Merit Awards honor organizations and individuals that drive meaningful impact in their respective fields. For more information about the Merit Awards and to view the full list of winners, visit www.merit-awards.com.

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Ancient Port, New Voyages: Ningbo’s Smart Manufacturing Expands Global Trade Footprint via Maritime Silk Road


COLOMBO, SRI LANKA- Media OutReach Newswire – 9 July 2026 – On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.

On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.
On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.

Separated by thousands of miles, the two millennia-old port cities reconnected, leveraging their ports as a bond and cultural exchanges as a cohesive force to hold in-depth talks on integrated port-city development and bilateral economic and trade connectivity.

This cross-Indian Ocean dialogue echoes the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a brand-new outbound development path. As a pivotal starting port of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, Ningbo is building a new global trade landscape powered by smart manufacturing.

A thousand years ago, merchant vessels from Mingzhou Port set sail southward loaded with Yue Kiln celadon porcelain, passing through Ceylon to deliver Oriental crafts across the Indian Ocean coasts. Precious gemstones and spices traveled the same sea route back to regions south of the Yangtze River, laying the groundwork for the earliest cultural exchange between the two ports through trade. Today, the cargo carried by giant cargo ships has undergone a dramatic transformation. Beyond traditional daily necessities, intelligent equipment, digital home appliances and industrial robots now dominate shipments.

Official statistics show that Ningbo’s exports of intelligent equipment, including mechanical arms and industrial robots, hit 440 million yuan in 2025, surging more than 40% year-on-year. From January to May this year, Ningbo’s exports of mechanical and electrical products maintained steady growth, reaching 247 billion yuan, a 4.1% year-on-year increase and accounting for 58.0% of the city’s total export volume. The new energy foreign trade sector saw explosive growth, with exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumping 138.4% year-on-year, with electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%. Smart manufactured goods are continuously expanding the scope of Ningbo’s foreign trade.

Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlights Ningbo’s outstanding going-global enterprises and their products, vividly illustrating the profound shift in Ningbo’s trade structure.

Alongside time-honored Maritime Silk Road staples such as celadon porcelain and silk, Ningbo’s smart manufactured products—including AI translation glasses, intelligent outdoor gear and digital small home appliances—occupy prominent display spaces across the venue. In Sri Lanka, Ningbo smart water meters are widely adopted nationwide, while handheld cooling fans and intelligent kitchen appliances have entered ordinary households.

Leveraging Colombo Port’s transshipment advantages, massive volumes of Ningbo smart manufactured goods are distributed onward to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. What Ningbo exports today is no longer mere commodities, but a complete outbound solution integrating technology, brand value and after-sales services.

Faced with mounting challenges including homogeneous global market competition and rising trade barriers, Ningbo’s manufacturing sector has abandoned the old model of low-cost OEM production, relying on intelligent transformation to consolidate its competitive edge in overseas markets.

Over more than a decade of digital transformation efforts, Ningbo has achieved full digital upgrading of all industrial enterprises above designated size. A large number of local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines, escaping vicious price competition through continuous technological iteration. Represented by five specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative enterprises dubbed Ningbo’s “Five Little Tigers”—famous for their core proprietary technologies, including highly sophisticated visual inspection equipment, heat-resistant materials, sun-proof coatings, puncture-proof materials and self-drilling fasteners—these niche manufacturers have developed differentiated technical routes and full-spectrum production capacity, cementing irreplaceable competitiveness for Ningbo smart manufacturing on global markets.

Beyond trade expansion, Ningbo has built a supporting cultural communication system to ensure “products go global, accompanied by local culture”.

The launch of Sri Lanka’s first “One-Meter Cultural Space” cultural station during the Colombo event marks a tangible milestone of Ningbo’s go-global initiative. Built on enterprises’ overseas outlets, these miniature cultural exhibition halls integrate intangible cultural heritage crafts, urban stories and smart products, enabling overseas clients to experience cutting-edge manufacturing while gaining insight into Ningbo’s profound cultural heritage.

During the twin-city story-sharing session, Ningbo entrepreneurs based in Sri Lanka and local designers blending Chinese and Sri Lankan aesthetics shared stories of bilateral exchanges. Economic and trade ties have evolved into a bond for people-to-people communication, bridging divides in cross-cultural trade.

From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping to every corner of the globe, Ningbo, the ancient Maritime Silk Road port, has preserved its enduring gene of openness. Where exchanges once relied purely on commodity trade, today smart manufacturing underpins a stable, diversified and high-value-added global trade network.

The Ningbo-Colombo dialogue stands as a vivid microcosm of this transformation: the port still links lands and seas, yet the core of its trade has undergone a full intelligent upgrade.

Rooted in its historical legacy as a key Maritime Silk Road hub, Ningbo has consolidated its industrial foundation through a decade of digital development, expanded global market reach via worldwide port networks, and softened trade cooperation through cultural exchanges. This brand-new outbound shipping route forged by smart manufacturing has not only reshaped the city’s foreign trade landscape, but also delivered a replicable port-city development model for Chinese manufacturing to go global.

Hashtag: #NingboSmartManufacturing #MaritimeSilkRoad #GlobalTrade

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Ancient Port, New Voyages: Ningbo’s Smart Manufacturing Expands Global Trade Footprint via Maritime Silk Road


COLOMBO, SRI LANKA- Media OutReach Newswire – 9 July 2026 – On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.

On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.
On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.

Separated by thousands of miles, the two millennia-old port cities reconnected, leveraging their ports as a bond and cultural exchanges as a cohesive force to hold in-depth talks on integrated port-city development and bilateral economic and trade connectivity.

This cross-Indian Ocean dialogue echoes the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a brand-new outbound development path. As a pivotal starting port of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, Ningbo is building a new global trade landscape powered by smart manufacturing.

A thousand years ago, merchant vessels from Mingzhou Port set sail southward loaded with Yue Kiln celadon porcelain, passing through Ceylon to deliver Oriental crafts across the Indian Ocean coasts. Precious gemstones and spices traveled the same sea route back to regions south of the Yangtze River, laying the groundwork for the earliest cultural exchange between the two ports through trade. Today, the cargo carried by giant cargo ships has undergone a dramatic transformation. Beyond traditional daily necessities, intelligent equipment, digital home appliances and industrial robots now dominate shipments.

Official statistics show that Ningbo’s exports of intelligent equipment, including mechanical arms and industrial robots, hit 440 million yuan in 2025, surging more than 40% year-on-year. From January to May this year, Ningbo’s exports of mechanical and electrical products maintained steady growth, reaching 247 billion yuan, a 4.1% year-on-year increase and accounting for 58.0% of the city’s total export volume. The new energy foreign trade sector saw explosive growth, with exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumping 138.4% year-on-year, with electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%. Smart manufactured goods are continuously expanding the scope of Ningbo’s foreign trade.

Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlights Ningbo’s outstanding going-global enterprises and their products, vividly illustrating the profound shift in Ningbo’s trade structure.

Alongside time-honored Maritime Silk Road staples such as celadon porcelain and silk, Ningbo’s smart manufactured products—including AI translation glasses, intelligent outdoor gear and digital small home appliances—occupy prominent display spaces across the venue. In Sri Lanka, Ningbo smart water meters are widely adopted nationwide, while handheld cooling fans and intelligent kitchen appliances have entered ordinary households.

Leveraging Colombo Port’s transshipment advantages, massive volumes of Ningbo smart manufactured goods are distributed onward to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. What Ningbo exports today is no longer mere commodities, but a complete outbound solution integrating technology, brand value and after-sales services.

Faced with mounting challenges including homogeneous global market competition and rising trade barriers, Ningbo’s manufacturing sector has abandoned the old model of low-cost OEM production, relying on intelligent transformation to consolidate its competitive edge in overseas markets.

Over more than a decade of digital transformation efforts, Ningbo has achieved full digital upgrading of all industrial enterprises above designated size. A large number of local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines, escaping vicious price competition through continuous technological iteration. Represented by five specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative enterprises dubbed Ningbo’s “Five Little Tigers”—famous for their core proprietary technologies, including highly sophisticated visual inspection equipment, heat-resistant materials, sun-proof coatings, puncture-proof materials and self-drilling fasteners—these niche manufacturers have developed differentiated technical routes and full-spectrum production capacity, cementing irreplaceable competitiveness for Ningbo smart manufacturing on global markets.

Beyond trade expansion, Ningbo has built a supporting cultural communication system to ensure “products go global, accompanied by local culture”.

The launch of Sri Lanka’s first “One-Meter Cultural Space” cultural station during the Colombo event marks a tangible milestone of Ningbo’s go-global initiative. Built on enterprises’ overseas outlets, these miniature cultural exhibition halls integrate intangible cultural heritage crafts, urban stories and smart products, enabling overseas clients to experience cutting-edge manufacturing while gaining insight into Ningbo’s profound cultural heritage.

During the twin-city story-sharing session, Ningbo entrepreneurs based in Sri Lanka and local designers blending Chinese and Sri Lankan aesthetics shared stories of bilateral exchanges. Economic and trade ties have evolved into a bond for people-to-people communication, bridging divides in cross-cultural trade.

From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping to every corner of the globe, Ningbo, the ancient Maritime Silk Road port, has preserved its enduring gene of openness. Where exchanges once relied purely on commodity trade, today smart manufacturing underpins a stable, diversified and high-value-added global trade network.

The Ningbo-Colombo dialogue stands as a vivid microcosm of this transformation: the port still links lands and seas, yet the core of its trade has undergone a full intelligent upgrade.

Rooted in its historical legacy as a key Maritime Silk Road hub, Ningbo has consolidated its industrial foundation through a decade of digital development, expanded global market reach via worldwide port networks, and softened trade cooperation through cultural exchanges. This brand-new outbound shipping route forged by smart manufacturing has not only reshaped the city’s foreign trade landscape, but also delivered a replicable port-city development model for Chinese manufacturing to go global.

Hashtag: #NingboSmartManufacturing #MaritimeSilkRoad #GlobalTrade

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.