On October 13, inside the Mudanjiang Industrial Collaboration Park in Heilongjiang Province, accompanied by a low and steady hum, the first hydrogen fuel cell drone in Northeast China lifted off and successfully completed its maiden flight.
On the same day, Heilongjiang Province's first hydrogen-powered drone assembly line — the Xieqing Ruifei Mudanjiang R&D and Intelligent Manufacturing Base project — officially began operations.
This marks the establishment of a production line in Mudanjiang that integrates carbon paper, fuel cell stacks, and hydrogen-powered drone assembly, painting a new industrial picture of a northern border city leveraging its cold-climate endowments, seizing the low-altitude economy opportunity, and cultivating new quality productive forces.
As a green and renewable energy source, hydrogen energy is one of the important directions for future energy development. In recent years, the city has incorporated the promotion of hydrogen energy industry development into its overall municipal planning.
As a key industrial project with a total investment of 200 million yuan, the Xieqing Ruifei Mudanjiang R&D and Intelligent Manufacturing Base is located in the Machinery and Electronic Equipment Industrial Park within the Industrial Collaboration Park. The project is being built in two phases, with the first phase laying out three core production lines for carbon paper, small fuel cells, and hydrogen-powered drone assembly.
Once the project reaches full production capacity, its annual output value is expected to reach 420 million yuan.
The three production lines each have their own division of labor and are closely interconnected: the carbon paper line produces 100,000 square meters of carbon paper annually, which serves as the "sinew and bones" of hydrogen fuel cells, responsible for gas diffusion and water-heat-electricity conduction; the stack line produces 5,000 units annually, serving as the "power heart" of hydrogen equipment and widely applicable to drones, sightseeing vehicles, and mobile power supplies; the hydrogen-powered drone assembly line has an annual capacity of 3,000 units, integrating airframes, flight controllers, motors, wiring harnesses, and other components to achieve localized final assembly.
The second phase will build an annual production capacity of 3,000 drone control systems and a low-altitude R&D center, with an estimated annual output value of 150 million yuan after production begins.
The core competitiveness of this base lies in anchoring to the unique scenario of Northeast China's long and harsh winters, pursuing an extreme-cold customized R&D approach.
The project has launched low-temperature-resistant, long-endurance hydrogen-powered drones equipped with the world's first heat cycle recovery system for drones in extreme cold regions, organically combining cutting-edge hydrogen drone technology with Mudanjiang's cold-climate endowments.
This innovation is not merely a single-point breakthrough in product technology; it provides hardcore technical support for the low-altitude economy development of the city, the province, and even the entire Northeast region, filling multiple gaps in the regional hydrogen low-altitude equipment manufacturing sector.
On the day the project began operations, a supercomputing energy project signing and the unveiling of a Shenyang Ligong University employment base were also held simultaneously.
"Production begins with cooperation, and landing brings immediate linkage." A production commencement ceremony is both the launch of a production line and a concentrated signing and matching event connecting industry-academia-research, the industrial chain, and the talent chain.
Moving from laboratory technology to industrialized products requires talent support; and the continuous iteration of cold-climate equipment requires universities to provide a steady stream of innovative strength.
Shenyang Ligong University, Mudanjiang University, Tuosi Drone, and other units have reached cooperation agreements, opening up channels connecting scientific research, talent, and industry, allowing enterprises to quickly take root and integrate into the local industrial ecosystem upon landing.
Behind the transition of major projects from landing to production is the park's full-cycle, concierge-style service.
To accelerate the project, the Industrial Collaboration Park established a dedicated task force implementing full-process tracking services.
From factory carrier allocation, approval procedure processing, production factor guarantees, technical expert matching, to labor demand coordination, the task force advances through the entire chain in a closed loop, resolving bottlenecks and difficulties in project construction one by one.
Beyond "attracting projects and allocating factories," the park also actively bridges connections, facilitating university-enterprise partnerships and local enterprise supporting cooperation, focusing on cultivating a sustainable industrial ecosystem so that enterprises can be attracted, retained, and thrive.
In the future, the city will take Xieqing Ruifei as the chain-leading enterprise, deepen university-enterprise collaborative cooperation with Shenyang Ligong University, Mudanjiang University, and other institutions, rely on university-enterprise cooperation platforms to promote the local transformation of scientific research achievements, cultivate local hydrogen equipment technical talent, and open up the complete innovation chain from "research to transformation to production."
Around hydrogen fuel cell stacks and extreme-cold hydrogen drone complete machine manufacturing, the city will continue to attract upstream and downstream new materials and component supporting enterprises to strengthen the intelligent equipment industrial cluster.
At the same time, leveraging its geographical advantage of opening northward, it will help extreme-cold specialty equipment explore domestic and international markets.
Cold climate is not a constraint on development but has become a unique resource endowment.
The commencement of the Xieqing Ruifei base and the maiden flight of the drone represent a vivid practice of Mudanjiang developing new quality productive forces based on its climate characteristics.
With hydrogen as its wings and heading toward the cold, the city of Mudanjiang is accumulating the upward strength of northern industry on the new track of the low-altitude economy.
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