In the smart production workshop of the Tongwei Solar Meishan base within the Ganmei Industrial Park in Meishan, Sichuan, robotic arms move with precision and speed, rolling out high-efficiency cells at a rate of 0.7 seconds per piece. At the Albemarle Sichuan New Materials plant in the Pengshan Economic Development Zone, the high-purity battery-grade lithium hydroxide production line is operating at full capacity. In the Chuanjinxiang production park within the Meishan High-tech Zone, intelligent chemical equipment runs smoothly with each process precisely coordinated. From crystalline silicon photovoltaics to lithium battery materials, from green fine chemicals to new-type energy storage, these bustling production scenes weave together a vivid picture of Meishan's new energy and new materials industry growing rapidly and forming clusters.
In recent years, Meishan has firmly shouldered the mission assigned by the provincial party committee to build a new energy and new materials manufacturing base in the Chengdu-Chongqing region. Adhering to the primary strategy of building a strong manufacturing city, Meishan has taken the new energy and new materials industry as the core leader of its "1+3" leading industries, deeply cultivating three major tracks: lithium batteries, photovoltaics, and chemical new materials. The city has driven its industry to leap forward from individual project settlements to full-chain integration, from industrial chain coordination to industrial cluster emergence, and from cluster expansion to forward-looking layout in future tracks, carving out a distinctive path of new-type industrialization with prominent advantages.
Where the momentum begins
Recently, walking into the Pengshan Economic Development Zone, the front lines of lithium battery production are buzzing with activity. Inside the production workshop of Albemarle Sichuan New Materials Co., Ltd., processes such as purification, reaction, and discharge operate in an orderly full flow. The central control screen displays real-time production parameters, while frontline workers closely monitor equipment status, running at full steam to fulfill orders for lithium battery raw materials. "Currently, our company has sufficient orders and favorable market conditions. All staff are on duty, and all lines are at full capacity as we seize the golden production period to ensure delivery and boost output value," said a relevant person in charge of the company.
The nearby Sichuan Tianci High-Tech Materials production plant is equally busy, with automated production lines running at full capacity. Batches of high-quality lithium battery electrolyte products roll off the line and are packed for shipment, fully ensuring supply for downstream power battery enterprises. This intense production momentum is a vivid microcosm of the vigorous development of Meishan's new energy and new materials industry.
Why this industry is the cornerstone of Meishan's economy
As the city's first leading industry to enter the hundred-billion-yuan tier, the new energy and new materials industry has become the "ballast stone" and "growth pole" of Meishan's industrial economy. In 2025, the city had 278 large-scale industrial enterprises in new energy and new materials, with an industry scale of 112.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.1%, accounting for 61.1% of the city's "1+3" leading industries. From January to August this year, the city's new energy and new materials industry reached 90.92 billion yuan, up 26.1% year-on-year, with its share of "1+3" industries rising to 65.5%, further consolidating its pillar position. Among these, the lithium battery industry continued its high-speed growth momentum, reaching 40.39 billion yuan, a substantial year-on-year increase of 137.6%. With the concentrated release of production capacity from leading enterprises such as GCL Lithium, lithium batteries have become the primary engine driving the city's industrial growth.
How the spatial layout supports industrial growth
Behind the strong industrial development momentum is the support of a scientific and systematic spatial layout. Based on its resource endowments and industrial foundation, Meishan has coordinated planning to form a contiguous development axis with the Meishan High-tech Zone, Ganmei Industrial Park, Pengshan Economic Development Zone, and Tianfu New Area Meishan Zone as the main functional areas. Other districts and county parks develop in coordination under a "one axis, multiple points" overall industrial spatial pattern with differentiated positioning and complementary linkages. They respectively focus on high-end fine chemicals, crystalline silicon photovoltaics, new-type energy storage, and R&D high-end manufacturing, jointly forming the core carrying area for the new energy and new materials industry. The three major industries of lithium batteries, photovoltaics, and chemical new materials cluster together spatially, empower each other technologically, and resonate in green development, forming comparative advantages of strong park carrying capacity, superior circular development models, and abundant innovation-driven momentum, building an industrial core competitiveness that is difficult to replicate.
Building the chain and strengthening the foundation
Relying on the "one axis, multiple points" industrial spatial pattern, Meishan adheres to "building circles, cultivating chains, and strengthening foundations," promoting the new energy and new materials industry to upgrade from individual project introduction to full industrial chain construction, and from upstream-downstream coordination to industrial cluster ecosystem emergence. All three major sub-sectors have formed core comparative advantages.
The lithium battery industry has built a comprehensive competitive advantage across the entire chain. The Chengdu-Deyang-Meishan-Suining lithium battery materials industrial cluster was selected as a Sichuan provincial advanced manufacturing cluster. The Pengshan District new-type green energy storage materials industrial cluster was selected as a provincial small and medium enterprise characteristic industrial cluster. New-type energy storage was selected as a Sichuan provincial new industrial track. The city's production capacity for lithium hydroxide, lithium iron phosphate, and electrolyte all ranks first in the province. It has achieved full-chain integration from front-end lithium salt processing, mid-stream cathode and anode materials and electrolyte production, to back-end power battery manufacturing and energy storage system integration, becoming the lithium battery industrial cluster with the most complete industrial chain within the Chengdu metropolitan area.
The photovoltaic industry has entered the top tier nationwide. It successfully applied for the Leshan-Meishan-Yibin crystalline silicon photovoltaic industrial cluster and the Meishan high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cell new track. Its production capacity ranks among the top nationwide, and it has built the province's largest crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell production base and the largest heterojunction cell production base. Among these, the Tongwei Solar Meishan base is both the world's largest single-site cell production factory and the world's first "lighthouse factory" in the global photovoltaic cell manufacturing sector. The clustering effect of leading enterprises continues to be released, attracting more than 30 supporting enterprises in aluminum frame brackets, encapsulation films, sealants, electronic chemicals, and industrial gases to successively settle. Enterprises can procure all core production materials without leaving the park, forming a healthy industrial ecosystem of "leaders attracting supporting players, supporting players gathering ecosystems."
Chemical new materials moving toward high-end and green transformation
Meishan has been listed as a main carrying area for the chemical new materials and new electronic materials sub-chains of the provincial advanced materials industrial chain, as well as a coordinated development area for vanadium-titanium rare earth materials and advanced non-ferrous materials sub-chains. Following the development path of "greening chemical new materials, high-endizing non-ferrous metal materials, and localizing new electronic materials," Meishan successfully applied for a provincial high-end fine chemicals industrial cluster and is cooperatively building the Chengdu-Chongqing electronic information advanced manufacturing cluster. Within the Meishan High-tech Zone, Jinxiang Sanrui has built the world's largest cyanamide series product production base, achieving full resource utilization of waste gas, waste residue, and wastewater through circular chemical processes, with energy consumption per unit product lower than the industry average. This is a typical representative of the city's chemical industry iterative upgrading. From traditional basic chemicals to green fine chemicals and electronic chemicals, Meishan's chemical industry is accelerating its upgrade along the direction of circularity and high-endization.
Looking ahead to future tracks
On the foundation of solidifying full-chain cluster advantages, Meishan stands at a new starting point of a hundred-billion-yuan industry, deeply cultivating the present to stabilize growth while also focusing on the long term to plan new chapters. Focusing on lithium batteries, photovoltaics, and chemical new materials, it is laying out next-generation technology tracks, using major projects as traction to continuously drive the industry toward high-endization, intelligence, and greening. At the same time, municipal state-owned enterprises such as Meishan Investment Holding Group are actively deploying new-type energy storage and virtual power plants, exploring integrated source-grid-load-storage aggregation operations to provide support for new energy consumption, flexible grid regulation, and green energy use in industry.
The three major sub-sectors have clear directions and defined paths. According to a relevant person in charge of the Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, the lithium battery industry will focus on developing high-compaction long-life lithium iron phosphate cathode materials, high-performance anode materials, new-type electrolytes and auxiliary materials, long-life large-capacity high-safety batteries and system integration, and accelerate the layout of new technologies such as sodium-ion batteries and solid-state batteries. The photovoltaic industry will focus on developing low-loss, ultra-thin, large-size silicon wafers and high-power N-type cells, moderately layout high-power low-degradation modules, and support the development of high-performance encapsulation films, backsheets, smart brackets, and smart electronic devices such as inverters and controllers, while exploring future technologies such as perovskite cells. The chemical new materials industry will focus on implementing the development and utilization of the entire natural gas industry chain, actively developing semiconductor, integrated circuit, new display electronic chemical materials, and wet electronic chemicals, and laying out four types of bio-manufacturing industries: biomedicine, bio-food, bio-materials, and bio-agriculture.
The clear industrial roadmap is being translated into major projects that are landing and taking effect one by one. Meishan adheres to grasping projects to promote investment and using investment to promote development, continuously attracting and landing a batch of key link projects and cutting-edge technology projects in the industrial chain. As of August this year, the city has 138 completed, under-construction, and planned new energy and new materials industry projects, with a total planned investment of 100.01 billion yuan. These projects both fill shortcomings and extend strengths, both strengthen foundations and plan for the future, injecting strong momentum into the industry's sustained growth.
From individual projects taking root to industrial chain integration and coordination, from industrial cluster emergence and expansion to forward-looking layout in future tracks, Meishan is accelerating the construction of a new energy and new materials manufacturing base in the Chengdu-Chongqing region with firm determination and pragmatic actions. As the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle advances in depth, Meishan's new energy and new materials industry will continue to amplify its comparative advantages and elevate its industrial level, occupying a more important position in the province's and even the nation's new energy industry landscape, contributing Meishan's strength to the building of a strong manufacturing province.
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