Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture · Industrial Robot Technology Services

Wenshan was one of the last prefectures in Yunnan to begin industrializing. It remained in a prolonged "support the front" wartime posture from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, and industrial construction returned to a normal track only after resuming in 1992. In 1952 the prefecture had just 14 industrial enterprises, total industrial value added of 2.8 million yuan, and an industrialization rate of 2.4%. During the Third Front period Wenshan was not a key national layout area, and local industry consisted mainly of small cement, small chemical fertilizer, small coal mine, and small power plants. Since reform and opening up it has built a batch of larger-scale cement plants, fertilizer plants, coal mines, and power stations, and brought in strategic partners including Yunnan Metallurgy, Yunnan Tin, Yunnan Copper, Fujian Zijin, and Anhui Conch. The "Wen-Yan-Ping" belt (Wenshan–Yanshan–Pingyuan) gradually took shape around metallurgy, building materials, acetylene chemicals, specialty products, biological resources, and modern logistics; Yanshan clustered 63 mining and metallurgy enterprises represented by Dounan Manganese Industry and the Ashe Smelter, and 93 building-materials enterprises led by Xingjian Cement Plant. The prefecture's manganese-series ferroalloy processing once reached a 450,000-ton scale, making it one of the country's five largest manganese ferroalloy production bases. Since 2012, Chinalco, Tasly, Shenhuo, Weiqiao, Datang, Hongtai, Yuze, and others have successively set up operations; new sectors represented by green aluminum, clean-energy power generation, and silicon PV have replaced tobacco, thermal power, and mining/metallurgy as the drivers of industry. In 2023 the prefecture completed 3.43 million tons of green electrolytic aluminum capacity — 41% of the provincial and 8% of the national total — the largest green aluminum capacity of any prefecture in China.

In 2024, Wenshan Prefecture's economic aggregate stepped onto a new 150-billion-yuan level, reaching 154.911 billion yuan; above-scale industrial value added grew 17.5%, outpacing the national and provincial rates by 11.7 and 14.2 percentage points respectively — first in the province. Total industrial value added was 37.513 billion yuan, 24.2% of GDP, and contributed 48.9% of the prefecture's economic growth. From 2020 to 2024, total above-scale industrial output rose from 54.582 billion yuan to 130.291 billion yuan, breaking 100 billion yuan for the first time — an average annual gain of 16.2%. Among leading industries, green aluminum posted an output value of 83.313 billion yuan in 2024, up 46.8%, accounting for 53.8% of the provincial total and pulling the prefecture's economic growth by 6.0 percentage points — first in the province; completed electrolytic aluminum capacity stands at 3.43 million tons, nearly one-tenth of the national total. The traditional Chinese medicine industry centered on notoginseng saw industrial output top 10 billion yuan for the first time in 2024, reaching 10.351 billion yuan; the prefecture has 57 medicinal-herb processing enterprises, 18 of them above-scale, and the comprehensive output value of notoginseng-centered medicinal herbs was 41.3 billion yuan. Green silicon achieved an output value of 1.232 billion yuan by the end of 2024. Among traditional industries, above-scale non-ferrous metals (excluding aluminum) posted an industrial output value of 11.223 billion yuan. Provincial-level industrial parks in the prefecture have grown to 5 and provincial-level development zones to 7; in January–August 2025, parks delivered above-scale industrial output of 77.209 billion yuan, 79.9% of the prefecture total.

Wenshan's automation applications have formed a fairly complete technology chain in the primary processing of medicinal herbs, while the green aluminum and silicon stages rely mainly on process automation. In notoginseng processing, Researcher Cui Xiuming's team at the Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Notoginseng, Kunming University of Science and Technology, together with Yunnan Cui Notoginseng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Zhichang Pharmaceutical (Yunnan) Co., Ltd., and other partners, systematically studied processing technologies for notoginseng washing, drying, and slicing. They created an automated production technology system covering soil removal, washing, trimming, and sorting of fresh notoginseng, and developed, with independent intellectual property rights, a humanoid-finger-mimicking trimming device for fresh notoginseng and a machine-vision sorting device based on an intelligent learning system, overcoming technical bottlenecks in intelligent washing, automated trimming, automatic separation of different plant parts, and rapid slicing. A production line processing 1,000 tons of fresh notoginseng per year was built. The project was granted 1 invention patent and 9 utility model patents, drafted 4 Yunnan provincial local standards and 2 group standards, and developed 5 new machines (sets). Yunnan Baiyao Group Wenshan Qihua's shared platform handles 30 tons of notoginseng per day, with automated control across soil shaking, fine washing, trimming, grading, slicing, and baking; its fresh-processing line features a newly developed AI identification and sorting system for medicinal herbs that uses a large-model vision system to recognize notoginseng shape, size, and texture, working with robots and a flexible gripping system to complete intelligent sorting. Electrolytic aluminum, aluminum alloy, and silicon lines are highly automated, but no public data exist on specific robot counts (to be verified). No public statistics are available on the prefecture's industrial robot base, annual new installations, or robot density (to be verified).