(Yicai) June 4 -- Gree Electric Appliances said the leading Chinese maker of home appliances will continue to develop its robotics business despite recently deregistering one of its robot subsidiaries.

Gree will mainly make industrial robots, the Zhuhai-based firm's investor relations department told Yicai yesterday.

Set up in November 2017 with a registered capital of CNY100 million (USD13.8 million), Gree Robot Luoyang was deregistered on May 31, according to corporate information platform Tianyancha. Zhuhai Gree Robot, set up in March of the same year with a registered capital of CNY50 million, remains operational, Yicai noticed.

Gree's robotics business belongs to its intelligent equipment division, according to its 2023 financial report. The company has developed industrial robots for the new energy fields of lithium batteries and photovoltaics, as well as auto parts die casting.

Gree's revenue from the intelligent equipment business, including robots, numerically controlled machine tools, and smart logistics warehousing, rose 55 percent to about CNY670 million in 2023 from a year earlier but accounted for only 0.3 percent of its total.

Gree's industrial robot business is smaller than leading domestic and foreign industrial robot makers. Its income from the intelligent equipment business last year was equal to only a tenth of Midea Group-backed Kuka's revenue from its robot and automation business in the first quarter of this year.

Sales in China's industrial robot market have climbed this year, said Lu Hanchen, director of the Gaogong Robotics Industry Research Institute. The country's industrial robot market will likely rise modestly in 2024, and the market share of domestic industrial robots will gradually grow while the differentiation between domestic and foreign manufacturers will continue, Lu noted.

China produced 120,294 industrial robots in the first three months of this year, up 4.9 percent from a year earlier, while sales rose 1.5 percent to 76,120 units, according to data from the Gaogong Robotics Industry Research Institute. Its imports dropped 46 percent to 12,770 units, with exports falling 10.8 percent to 4,741 units.

Editor: Martin Kadiev