Meituan Escalates Drone Delivery Fleet via In-House Production and Network Expansion

Meituan, China's leading tech platform for on-demand delivery services, is aggressively scaling its low-altitude logistics ecosystem. By vertically integrating its operations, Meituan not only manages the e-commerce platform and logistics network but also designs and manufactures its proprietary drone fleet at its specialized smart factory in Shenzhen. Currently, the company operates commercial drone delivery routes across major tier-one Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, alongside international routes in Hong Kong and Dubai.

The strategy comes amid an exponential surge in Meituan's overall delivery volume. Founded in 2010 with a strategic pivot to enhance food delivery in 2015, the company's courier network expanded to seven point forty-five million active riders by 2025, a two point two times increase year over year. Simultaneously, its monthly delivery order volume surged from twenty billion orders in 2024 to fifty-two billion orders by 2025. To optimize efficiency and alleviate urban traffic congestion, Meituan initiated drone testing in 2019 and launched full commercial operations in 2021. Today, the company operates sixty-five domestic routes and has successfully fulfilled over seven hundred and forty thousand deliveries. Looking ahead, Meituan has set a firm strategic milestone to achieve full financial profitability in its drone delivery business division within the next three years.