Qujing · Industrial Robot Technology Services

Qujing's industrial skeleton was largely built up by the Third Front movement. After the state launched the Third Front in 1964, Yunnan divided the province into three tiers: 35 border counties including Wenshan and Honghe formed the "first line," 41 counties and districts including Kunming the "second line," and 58 counties in northeast and northwest Yunnan the "third line" rear zone. The Sixth Ministry of Machinery Industry laid out a torpedo R&D and production system in Yunnan covering 10 factories, 1 research institute, and 1 test site, dispersed in the deep mountains of Qujing, Chuxiong, and elsewhere. Among them, the state-run Southwest Yunshui Machinery Plant (Plant 5012) sat in the mountains of Malong, Qujing, with a mailing address of only "P.O. Box 724, Kunming"; the state-run Southwest Hongyun Machinery Plant (Plant 5072) broke ground at Wangjiazhuang, Malong, in March 1970. On transport, the Guiyang–Kunming railway opened in 1966 and the Chengdu–Kunming railway in 1970. The Third Front formed ordnance industry bases centered on Chongqing and Qujing, and electronics industry bases centered on Mianyang, Duyun, Kaili, and Qujing. Yunnan built new coal mining, power, and machinery enterprises in Qujing, Xiaguan, Yuxi, and Chuxiong, forming a northeastern industrial zone centered on Qujing and Dongchuan. In chemicals, the Zhanyi Chemical Fertilizer Plant and Yunnan Tire Plant were built; in machinery, the Yunnan Internal Combustion Engine Plant was rebuilt and expanded. These Third Front projects turned Qujing from an agricultural area into an industrial stronghold in northeast Yunnan, and provided the park infrastructure and skilled-worker base for its later uptake of the silicon photovoltaic and new-energy battery industries.

In 2024, Qujing's GDP was 367.722 billion yuan, down 0.9%; secondary industry value added was 127.514 billion yuan, down 7.1%. Above-scale industrial value added fell 6.6%: mining −18.1%, manufacturing −2.3%, electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply −10.1%. Within manufacturing, tobacco products grew 2.1%, high-tech manufacturing 8.8%, and equipment manufacturing 9.4%; steel and non-ferrous metals (excluding rare and precious metals) fell 8.8%, and coal mining and dressing 19.3%; green silicon PV rose 13.6%, while new-energy batteries fell 4.1%. Citywide industrial value added in 2024 was 104.947 billion yuan; raw coal, thermal power generation, and crude steel output accounted for 48.7%, 39.7%, and 24.5% of the provincial total, respectively. The city's phosphate-based cathode material capacity accounts for 16% of the national and 61% of the provincial total. Qujing ETDZ hosts LONGi Green Energy, JA Solar, Dynanonic, and EVE Energy, forming a chain from industrial silicon and polysilicon to battery cathode materials. According to a Yunnan Daily report, in January–September of a certain year the ETDZ's silicon PV and new-energy battery industries achieved output values of 12.822 billion yuan and 6.827 billion yuan, respectively (the report did not specify the year; to be verified). Structurally, Qujing is one of the few prefectures in Yunnan that simultaneously commands five sectors — coal-based power, steel, chemicals, silicon PV, and new-energy batteries — but in 2024 falling prices for silicon feedstock and steel dragged its industrial growth into negative territory.

Qujing is one of the few prefectures in Yunnan with local industrial robot manufacturing capability. Dayan Intelligent Robotics (Qujing) Co., Ltd. settled in the Hongqiao area of Malong Park in September 2023; it has completed two welding robot production lines and three cooking robot production lines, and plans to invest 1 billion yuan across five phases to build a production base, with an expected annual output value of about 3 billion yuan once fully operational. On the application side, EVE Energy Qujing is Yunnan's first energy-storage power battery project to enter production, with planned total investment of 5.5 billion yuan and annual capacity of 23 GWh; industrial robots handle cell transfer and assembly. Silicon PV and polysilicon stages widely deploy automated loading/unloading and AGV transport, but no public statistics exist on robot counts by enterprise (to be verified). In agriculture, Luliang County is one of Yunnan's largest vegetable export bases: the cold stores of the Yunnan Jiangnan International Agricultural Products Trading Center upload data via 5G and IoT, with warehouse temperatures adjusted automatically in real time; in 2024 the base handled 2.119 million tons of agricultural products for distribution and primary processing. The Luteng Intelligent Cold-Chain Logistics Park passed completion acceptance in September 2024; its cold stores can move up to 1,000 tons of vegetables, providing more than 300 jobs per day on average, though sorting and packing remain largely manual. In 2024, Qujing produced 572.3242 million cut flower stems and 121,500 tons of medicinal herbs; no public statistics are currently available on automation penetration in postharvest cut-flower grading or medicinal-herb primary processing (to be verified).