By Qiaoyi Li, Go Nakamura and Alessandro Diviggiano
JIANGSU, China, July 24 (Reuters) – CiDi, the Hong Kong-listed Chinese autonomous mining equipment maker, expects overseas deployments to grow this year as it expands beyond China, Chief Executive Albert Hu told Reuters.
CiDi has equipped partially automated autonomous excavators in Australia and is preparing a larger rollout there this year, alongside efforts to land contracts in the Middle East, South America and Europe, Hu said.
CiDi and rivals including Fujian-based EACON are racing to provide self-driving trucks and other mining equipment, cutting labour and fuel costs while improving safety.
Beyond trucks, CiDi is readying robotic explosive-hauling and drilling machines for “very dangerous, very precise” work, Hu said.
“Some of our trucks have robotic arms now,” he said. “Is it a truck? Or is it a robot? We’re blurring the lines between the two.”
Hu said CiDi can grow faster than China’s autonomous mining equipment sector. He expects overseas markets to contribute a double-digit percentage of revenue next year, up from a low single-digit share.
Unlike rivals that operate truck fleets, CiDi sells hardware and software directly to mine operators, leaving manufacturing to partner truck and equipment makers in what Hu called an “asset-light” model.
CiDi, which went public in late 2025, saw its revenue more than double last year to 884.8 million yuan ($130.6 million). Deployments and revenue grew 374% in China, compared with roughly 73% for China’s industry, Hu said.
ROBOTS AT WORK
At an open-pit quarry in Jurong, Jiangsu province, owned by cement conglomerate TCC Group Holdings, 12 fully electric unmanned trucks moved across the site on Friday, recharging or autonomously hauling limestone to crushing facilities. CiDi says the fleet is the first fully electric and self-driving mining truck fleet.
China leads the world in the use of autonomous mining trucks, with roughly 10% of trucks now driverless. CiDi’s global fleet has grown to more than 1,700 vehicles, mostly in China, across 30 quarries and coal mines. A single operator can monitor around 100 trucks remotely, a ratio Hu said can scale further.
Coordinating the movement of the fleet — particularly at large coal mines where up to 500 autonomous trucks operate at once — is core to CiDi’s edge, Hu said. “That’s a very big technological threshold for anyone in this space.”
CiDi is also designing robots for blasting and drilling. “We’re not talking about a couple of kilos of TNT,” Hu said. “We’re talking about a truckload of explosive that needs to be charged into the side of a hill to blow the rocks up.”
CiDi-equipped explosive-handling units are expected in the third quarter with drilling robots early next year, starting in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia — provinces where scrutiny has intensified since a gas explosion killed 82 workers at a Shanxi coal mine in May.
CiDi has a distribution partnership with British mining equipment maker MMD Group and is looking to partner with others, including China-based mine operators, as it expands overseas, Hu said.
($1 = 6.7733 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
