Tongnan District · Industrial Robot Technology Services

Tongnan's industrial starting point was very low: gross output was only 570,000 yuan in 1949, and in 1952 there were just 5 industrial enterprises producing mainly cloth, bricks, and tiles through manual labor. By 1978 output had reached 45.67 million yuan, four times the 1957 level, with textiles, food, machinery, and agricultural product processing taking shape and more than 60 products, including 2,694 tons of canned food, 850 tons of baijiu, 3.12 million kWh of electricity, and 100 tons of raw silk. Output reached 238 million yuan in 1992 and 557 million yuan in 1997. Chemicals are Tongnan's signature line: civil works for the Tongnan Chemical Plant began in March 1990; the feed-in start-up and ignition ceremony was held in July 1991; the first batch of ammonium bicarbonate was produced in August; and trial production was completed in December, with total investment of 34.3055 million yuan. By 1992 the plant had 15,000 tons/year of synthetic ammonia matched with 60,000 tons/year of ammonium bicarbonate, easing the county's tight fertilizer supply. Park-based development began with the Tongnan Industrial Park established in 2006, split by the Fu River into north and south zones: the 12-square-kilometer south zone handles agricultural and sideline product processing and agricultural machinery (Kaixin Electronics, Hongqi Steel Rim, Tianwei Food), while the 6-square-kilometer north zone focuses on fine chemicals (Minfeng Agrochemical, Wanlilai Chemical). It was upgraded to the Tongnan High-Tech Industrial Development Zone in December 2016 and later formed a "one park, three zones" layout, with the east zone emphasizing surface treatment and new energy industries.

In 2024, Tongnan District's GDP grew 5.7%, industrial value added grew 5.2%, above-scale industrial value added grew 6.9%, and above-scale gross industrial output grew 2.8%; above-scale industrial revenue grew 6.9% and total profits grew 42.2%. By sector, nonferrous metal smelting and rolling output grew 51.2%, liquor, beverage, and refined tea manufacturing grew 26.9%, automobile manufacturing grew 21.2%, and metal products grew 10.3%. Within the "3+3+N" modern manufacturing system, food and agricultural product processing output grew 10.9%, automobile remanufacturing and intelligent connected NEV parts grew 7.3%, new energy and new-type energy storage grew 5.6%, and chemical new materials grew 2.1%. Industrial investment grew 17.0%. Two industries have national recognition. First, lemons: planted on 320,000 mu, they account for 50% of China's lemon exports; more than 360 business entities have been cultivated, over 100 standardized orchards built, and 40,000 mu registered as export bases. Second, the automotive aftermarket: Chongqing Hongxi Automobile Technology dismantles more than 200 end-of-life vehicles a day, recycles over 150,000 scrapped vehicles a year with output exceeding 500 million yuan, and has reached cooperation with countries such as Benin and Nigeria. The district is also home to chromium salt producers including Minfeng Chemical. Total foreign trade in 2024 reached 2.05 billion yuan, up 36.1%.

Both robot supply and demand in Tongnan can be traced, but neither has an authoritative statistical basis; the installed base and robot density are to be verified. On the supply side, Estun (Chongqing) Robot Engineering Co., Ltd. has set up in the Tongnan High-Tech Zone, where R&D staff commission a "sheet metal flexible intelligent manufacturing line" before selling it to manufacturers; the line can produce multiple products on a single line with quantities and models customized to order. The zone hosts more than 20 such intelligent equipment and robotics projects, forming an initial chain from R&D and manufacturing to marketing and service. On the demand side, the district has stated that "machine-replaces-worker" projects should primarily use locally made Estun robots, with additional subsidies on top of municipal ones based on the number of units updated and the area; it planned to support 10 enterprises cumulatively in machine-replaces-worker retrofits and to build 2 smart factories, 10 digital workshops, and 30 digital production lines (completion of this plan to be verified). In addition, the lemon industry is promoting integrated water-fertilizer management plus IoT control, green pest control, and dedicated lemon machinery, and auto remanufacturing enterprises are gradually introducing automation in inspection, cleaning, dismantling, and remanufacturing processes. Equipment types center on six-axis robots, sheet metal bending and welding workstations, SCARA and parallel sorting robots, and AGVs.