Chinese food delivery giant Meituan officially launched its intelligent drone manufacturing center in Shenzhen’s Longhua District on Tuesday. The center started production on the same day.

The center is expected to cater to R&D, verification, trial production, mass production and maintenance of Meituan’s self-developed drones and supporting intelligent modules.

The center’s launch underscores Meituan’s success in building a complete drone industrial chain, including R&D, design, manufacturing, operational management, and maintenance services, according to Chinese media reports.

Meituan is expected to make full use of this highly automated and intelligent production center to meet its increasing demand for delivery drones.

Its fourth-generation drones will be produced at the center and used regularly after passing various tests.

Compared with its previous models, Meituan’s fourth-generation drone has upgraded environmental adaptation capabilities, which allow it to fly stably in moderate rain, moderate snow, weak lighting conditions, and temperatures ranging from -20 to 50 degrees Celsius. It can adapt to environment conditions in over 97% of cities in China.

Meituan said the construction of the production center is aimed to meet the company’s production needs for high-quality transportation tools.

Meituan, which engaged some 6 million gig delivery workers to deliver billions of orders in 2022, has been developing drone delivery since 2017. In Shenzhen, a city that’s home to a mature drone supply chain, Meituan has been regularly operating drone delivery routes for the last year and a half.

The company has operated 17 delivery routes across the country and made over 184,000 drone deliveries so far, with more than 100,000 made in Shenzhen in 2022.

As a market leader in the race to develop low-altitude economic industries such as drone delivery, Shenzhen has introduced supportive policies.

Authorities in Shenzhen said that the low-altitude economy in the city jumped to 75 billion yuan (US$10.3 billion) in 2022, accounting for 70% of the country’s total.