Industrial safety sensors refer to sensor devices used to monitor personnel behavior or equipment operating status, and to trigger alarms, control actions, or shutdowns when potential hazards are detected. Unlike ordinary sensors, industrial safety sensors demand higher real-time performance, higher reliability, and stricter functional safety requirements. Moreover, the product design and development processes typically need to comply with international functional safety standards and meet functional safety level requirements such as SIL and PL, to adapt to the stringent safety and reliability demands of high-end manufacturing.
In recent years, as domestic manufacturing enterprises accelerate their global expansion, stringent safety regulations in overseas markets have compelled them to equip compliant industrial safety sensors. Meanwhile, multiple domestic policies such as the "14th Five-Year Plan for Intelligent Manufacturing Development", the "Industrial Internet + Safe Production Action Plan", and the "New Work Safety Law" have been successively implemented, continuously strengthening the safety production supervision requirements at industrial sites. Driven by the dual forces of domestic industrial upgrading and global competition, the industrial safety sensor market has entered a period of rapid growth.
Overall Market Sales Scale of China's Industrial Safety Sensor Sector from 2021 to 2028 (100 Million RMB)
Data source: MIR睿工业 Data Report. Industrial safety sensor products mainly include: safety light curtains, safety door switches, 3D safety sensors, safety proximity switches, safety mats, safety encoders, safety laser scanners, etc., excluding instrument products. This market scale includes revenues from product sales, safety services, and integration solutions.
According to data from MIR睿工业, the market size of China's industrial safety sensors exceeded 4.6 billion RMB in 2025, a year-on-year growth of over 30%, indicating a significant overall growth trend in the industry.
01. Accelerated Market Growth, with Technology and Certification Forming Core Barriers
Early market demand mainly came from the automation transformation of traditional manufacturing, such as the demand for basic safety light curtains, safety switches, and safety relays in industries like machine tools, automotive, 3C electronics, and logistics. Today, as the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing continue to deepen, and the scale of precision emerging industries such as new energy, lithium batteries, photovoltaics, and semiconductors expands rapidly, the industry's demand for industrial safety sensors with high precision, high stability, and high protection levels has experienced explosive growth. Industrial safety sensors are beginning to penetrate more complex and higher-level scenarios.
Main Downstream Industry Applications of Industrial Safety Sensors
However, for a long time, there has been a structural contradiction in China's industrial safety sensor industry: the market size continues to grow, and domestic manufacturers are also rising rapidly, but why is the high-end market still dominated by foreign brands?
Because industrial safety sensors are directly related to personnel safety and production responsibility, the high-end market has extremely high requirements for certification systems, functional safety capabilities, industry experience, and service capabilities. In contrast, although some domestic manufacturers have cost and localization advantages, there is still a gap in international certification systems and the ability to adapt to high-end application scenarios. Therefore, the industrial safety sensor market has long been monopolized by overseas giants such as SICK, Omron, and KEYENCE.
For high-end customers, whether a product has passed international certification, meets functional safety standards, and has mature application cases is often more important than price. Especially in industries such as automotive, new energy, and semiconductors, OEMs usually prioritize mature brands that have been verified over the long term. This is also the core reason why, despite the rapid development of domestic manufacturers in recent years, the high-end market has long been dominated by foreign brands.
02. Industrial Safety Sensors Are Entering the "High Threshold Era"
Industrial safety sensors are not ordinary industrial products; in essence, they belong to "liability products." Once a product fails, it can not only lead to equipment downtime but also cause personnel injuries or even production safety accidents. In the past, industry competition focused more on product performance. However, with the rapid growth in demand for high-end manufacturing, lithium battery overseas expansion, human-machine collaboration, and flexible production lines, industry competition is shifting from "product competition" to "system capability competition." In this process, certification and compliance, participation in standard formulation, and consulting and training service capabilities are becoming new core thresholds, and also the key for domestic industrial safety sensor enterprises to truly achieve a breakthrough in the high-end market.
Certification and Compliance: The First Barrier in the High-End Market
Certification is the "entry threshold" for accessing overseas markets. Different countries and regions have strict regulatory requirements for safety products. Products that complete compliance certification through international authoritative bodies such as TÜV, SGS, and UL, and obtain the EU CE-MD Machinery Directive certification and North American NRTL safety certification, can help expand the high-end customer base and overseas export markets. However, the long certification cycle, high R&D investment, and strict audit standards are often unaffordable for small and medium-sized domestic manufacturers, directly widening the development gap among industry enterprises.
Current Status of Different Product Certifications for Domestic and Foreign Manufacturers
Data source: MIR睿工业 summarized and compiled based on public information
From the perspective of certification coverage, foreign brands currently have obvious advantages in functional safety certification and international market access certification. Whether it is safety light curtains, safety door locks, or safety laser scanners, the coverage rate of PL/SIL safety certification using international authoritative bodies such as TÜV, SGS, and UL generally reaches over 95%, and international certifications such as CE/UL/RoHS have basically achieved full coverage. In contrast, domestic manufacturers show a clear differentiation. Some leading enterprises are gradually accelerating their breakthroughs into the high-end market by improving functional safety and international certification systems, but small and medium-sized manufacturers still have obvious shortcomings in functional safety certification.
Participation in Safety Standard Formulation: Grasping the Discourse Power of Industry Development
Actively participating in the drafting and revision of domestic and international standards such as IEC, ISO, and GB can not only enable enterprises to accurately grasp the direction of industry development but also integrate their own technological R&D experience into industry specifications, substantively influencing the technological development path of the industry and setting industry technology benchmarks.
Consulting and Training Service Capabilities: Building a Moat for Long-Term Enterprise Development
The practical application of industrial safety sensors involves multiple links such as solution selection, on-site debugging, safety training, and later operation and maintenance. A comprehensive service system including safety risk assessment and safety training can significantly reduce the difficulty of safety production transformation for terminal enterprises. It is a key support for ensuring the effective implementation of safety solutions and enhancing the stickiness of long-term cooperation with customers.
In the high-end market where relevant international safety standard certifications have been obtained and European and American regulations and standard requirements are met, the localization rate of domestic industrial safety sensor products remains overall low. Among them, the localization rate of safety light curtains is about 19%-21%, safety door switches are about 16%-22%, and the localization rate of safety area protection products is less than 5%. The obvious gap of domestic manufacturers in the construction of the global functional safety system has led to the relative weakness of China's safety standards and certification systems for factory equipment. Domestic factories are severely lacking in equipment safety protection, making it an inevitable trend for industry development to promote the upgrading of the industrial safety system.
However, WanCe, as the first domestic brand to obtain multiple international certifications and the only domestic brand providing "products + solutions + safety consulting" in the field of industrial safety, has achieved layout in multiple aforementioned segmented fields, becoming one of the few domestic manufacturers to enter the high-end functional safety market.
Meanwhile, in the "2026 China Industrial Safety Sensor Manufacturers Comprehensive Strength Evaluation Report" officially released by MIR睿工业, WanCe successfully entered the comprehensive strength scoring system for industrial safety sensor manufacturers, with its comprehensive strength comparable to many foreign brands. Relying on its leading advantages in comprehensive services such as the overall market and customer side, international certification compliance, participation in standard formulation, solution capabilities, and safety consulting and training services, it ranks first in comprehensive strength among domestic manufacturers, becoming a benchmark enterprise for the domestic breakthrough of industrial safety sensors.
03. Why Did WanCe Achieve the Breakthrough First?
Deeply Cultivating Industrial Safety Sensors, WanCe Achieves Multiple Breakthroughs.
Since its establishment, WanCe has always taken building a domestically independent and innovative industrial safety sensor system as its goal. Its core R&D team comes from overseas leading enterprises such as Omron, KEYENCE, and SICK, possessing profound profound core technology accumulation, rich high-end project implementation experience, and mature international product R&D thinking. Therefore, from the source of design, WanCe strictly benchmarks against international standards, implements rigorous redundant design and reliability verification, and its related products have successfully obtained CE and North American UL safety standard certifications, growing into the only domestic brand currently providing "products + solutions + safety consulting" in the field of industrial safety. This also means that in the process of the industrial safety sensor industry moving from "product competition" to "system competition," WanCe has taken the lead in possessing the core conditions to enter the high-end market.
In 2025, WanCe's industrial safety sensor-related business achieved a year-on-year growth of over 100%, becoming the fastest-growing enterprise in this field. This achievement is not accidental, but the result of the combined effects of its multiple capabilities in products, implementation capabilities in complex industrial scenarios, and deep binding with the industry customer system.
1. Breakthrough in International Certification System: Domestic Industrial Safety Products Step into the High-End Market
Most Comprehensive Domestic Certifications: For a long time, the lack of international certifications has been the biggest obstacle restricting domestic industrial safety sensors from moving towards the high-end market and going global. WanCe deeply cultivates core tracks such as industrial safety sensors and is the first domestic industrial safety enterprise to obtain multiple international certifications. Many of the company's products have obtained international standard certifications such as CE-MD and NRTL functional safety. Among them, the safety light curtains have passed international standards and authoritative certifications such as TÜV, UL, CE, RoHS, and SIL3, and it is also the first domestic product to pass the North American NRTL safety standard certification; the safety door switches not only pass authoritative certifications of relevant standards such as TÜV, UL, CE, and RoHS, but also rank first in the richness of domestic model types; its 3D sensor products have passed authoritative certifications such as SGS, CE, and RoHS, as well as the Class 1 Laser safety standard certification, making it one of the few domestic industrial safety manufacturers with international access capabilities.
2. Breakthrough in Product Capabilities: From Single-Point Products to System-Level Safety Capabilities
At the level of hardware product R&D, WanCe adheres to the path of independent innovation and R&D, continuously deeply cultivates the core underlying technologies of industrial safety sensing, and continuously enriches the product matrix. It now covers a full range of industrial safety products such as safety light curtains, safety door switches, and 3D safety sensors, which can meet the safety protection needs of various industrial sites. At the same time, through continuous layout of core technologies in industrial safety, WanCe has launched the LT series, Asia's first "AI + 3D + Safety" 3D safety sensor. Currently, this product has been widely used in industries such as automotive OEMs and component factories, new energy batteries and photovoltaics, 3C electronics, logistics, and metal processing, with nearly 1,000 implemented scenarios, and has already cooperated with several leading domestic industrial robot and embodied intelligence enterprises.
3. Breakthrough in Standard Participation: From Market Follower to Industry Standard Maker
As a deputy secretary-general member unit of SAC/TC208 (National Technical Committee 208 on Mechanical Safety of Standardization Administration of China), WanCe has deeply participated in the formulation of 25 national safety standards including GB/T 16855.1, and has published 9 related standards.
Beyond industrialization and globalization layout, WanCe is also further strengthening its systematic service capabilities for terminal scenarios.
At the solution level, WanCe has launched the SCPCE safety solution, which can provide customers with full-process services from risk assessment, production line safety transformation design to certification support. At the level of safety consulting and capability empowerment, WanCe has set up a professional safety service expert team, dedicated to providing customers with full life-cycle support covering international safety standard training, customized solution design, and final certification implementation, helping customers build their own safety capability systems and promoting the transformation from "passive compliance" to "proactive safety."
4. Capital Support: Recognition of Systematic Capabilities by the Industrial Side
In January 2026, WanCe announced the completion of an over 100 million RMB Series A+ financing round. This round of financing was jointly invested by institutions such as Fengyuan Capital, Sanhua Co., Ltd., Jianzhi Group, Orient Securities Capital, and Wanlian Tianze, with old shareholder Tongchuang Weiye following up with additional investment. It is understood that the funds from this round of financing will be mainly used for new product R&D, building China's first high-quality compliant industrial safety sensor scaled production base, and strengthening the layout of overseas service networks and global business expansion. The entry of industrial capital also indirectly reflects the market's recognition of WanCe's systematic capabilities and industrialization path.
Conclusion
As global manufacturing safety standards continue to upgrade, the industrial safety sensor industry is entering a new stage of competition.
In this process, industry competition will also gradually evolve from single product capabilities to a comprehensive contest covering certification, standards, products, solutions, and global service capabilities. For domestic industrial safety manufacturers, this not only means higher thresholds but also new industrial opportunities. Enterprises with profound core technology accumulation, industrial chain integration capabilities, and globalization layout potential are expected to consolidate their advantages in the domestic market while realizing a dual-wheel drive pattern of "domestic leadership + overseas breakthroughs." The value of WanCe lies not only in its current market performance but also in providing a referable path sample for domestic industrial safety manufacturers to leap into the high-end market.
In the future, enterprises need to proactively strengthen core technology R&D, improve the construction of the standard system, and deepen collaborative innovation with system integrators and terminal users, so as to occupy the strategic commanding heights in the industrial safety ecosystem.