Zigong

Zigong was founded as a city because of salt: the Shenhai Well was sunk in 1835, the world's first well deeper than a thousand metres, its percussion-drilling technology leading the globe. From the late Qing into the Republic, Zigong's salt fields were Sichuan's largest well-salt producing area, a forest of tianche timber derricks boiling brine with natural gas — a scene worthy of "ancient industrial marvel". During the war of resistance "Sichuan salt for Hubei" sent Zigong's output soaring, making it an important prop of wartime finance and of salt for troops and civilians. Under the Third Front programme the Dongfang Boiler Works (a national key project newly built at Zigong in 1966), the Changzheng Machine Tool Plant and the Zigong Cemented Carbide Works were completed in succession, forming a twin-thread structure of "salt chemicals + equipment manufacturing". Zigong became a city in 1939, one of the earliest provincially administered cities in Sichuan.

In 2025 Zigong's above-scale industrial value added grew steadily. Drones and general aviation have been listed as a provincial strategic emerging industry cluster (AVIC UAS final assembly and its supply system); energy-saving and environmental-protection equipment (the Dongfang Boiler family) keeps its edge and extends into hydrogen-energy equipment; salt chemicals are reaching towards fluorosilicone new materials (Sinochem Chenguang Institute's fluorosilicones, Jiuda Salt Chemistry); and the coloured-lantern cultural industry keeps exporting. Renewal and retrofit of the old industrial base runs in step with the adaptive reuse of former plant sites, with the Zigong High-tech Zone as a national-level carrier.

AVIC UAS (final assembly of the Wing Loong series), Dongfang Boiler (energy-saving and environmental equipment), Zigong Cemented Carbide, the Chenguang Chemical Research Institute (fluorosilicone materials), Jiuda Salt Industry, and Atlantic Welding Materials.

Zigong's market is marked by "much old equipment, fast-growing new industry". Salt-chemical and machinery plants run long-lived equipment (plenty of Third Front-era shops and machine tools), giving steady demand for overhauls, refurbishment and CNC conversion; drone assembly and supply firms run new equipment and need systematic preventive maintenance with clean-assembly environment management; special-equipment repair at cemented-carbide and welding-materials firms — presses, sintering furnaces — is highly specialised. Our focus: refurbishment and upgrades at the old industrial base (Module 05), CNC retrofits on machine tools (Modules 04/08), and building maintenance systems at emerging aviation supply plants (Module 01).