NANSHA, Guangzhou, China (Mar 2026) — It took TCL Air Conditioner just five years to manufacture 100 million units. To mark the milestone, the brand officially opened its newest production facility: the TCL Air Conditioner Guangzhou Smart Manufacturing Base, a sprawling factory complex in Nansha, Guangzhou that it calls the highest-capacity single-base intelligent air conditioner plant in China’s Greater Bay Area.
The facility sits on 303 mu of land (roughly 20 hectares), with a total investment of nearly 2 billion yuan (approx. PHP 15.5 billion / $267 million). At full tilt, it pumps out one finished air conditioner every seven seconds.
A factory built around AI
The Guangzhou base runs on a supercomputer-driven production line backed by an AI data center capable of 300 quintillion operations per second. That computing muscle feeds 2,000-plus AI agents and pulls data from 17,000 IoT sensors planted across the facility.
Three of its production areas operate as fully automated “dark factories,” meaning the lights-out lines for evaporators, condensers, piping, and injection molding run around the clock without human operators. TCL also claims the world’s only fully automated heat exchanger production line using AI-guided robotic arms for stamping, punching, and swelling processes, a setup it says improves labor efficiency by 41.7%.
Annual production capacity at the base stands at 8 million units. TCL expects the facility to generate 3 billion yuan (approx. PHP 23.2 billion / $400 million) in output value in 2026 alone, with a target to cross 10 billion yuan within five years.
Going green while going fast
Speed is not the only story here. The base is designed around a zero-carbon operating model, with photovoltaic panels covering 50,000 square meters and an equivalent-scale energy storage system. AI manages energy allocation across the entire facility, generating nearly 6.98 million kWh annually and saving the equivalent of roughly 2,081 tons of standard coal per year.
The plant also runs near-zero solid waste, near-zero exhaust gas, and near-zero water waste processes, with digital monitoring keeping everything in check.
Du Juan, CEO of TCL Industries, described the facility as the first “digital intelligence + zero carbon” dual-benchmark park in the global air conditioner industry and framed the Guangzhou opening as a launching pad rather than a finish line.
The products behind the numbers
The 100-million-unit milestone sits on the back of TCL’s FreshIN AI air conditioner line, which the company positions around three experiences: AI sleep, AI comfort, and AI fresh air.
The sleep-focused variant uses millimeter-wave radar to track a user’s sleep state in real time and adjusts temperature dynamically throughout the night. The goal is to address common complaints like difficulty falling asleep, shallow sleep, and temperature swings. A built-in fresh air system handles oxygenation and humidity to reduce the mouth dryness and stuffiness that air conditioning can cause.
TCL currently sells air conditioners in over 160 countries and ranks among the top two globally in exports and top three in overall sales volume in the category.
Chen Shaolin, Senior Vice President of TCL Industries and General Manager of the TCL Air Conditioner Business Unit, said the Guangzhou base will serve as a new engine for the brand’s global supply chain and its push into AI-driven health-oriented home appliances.
Pricing and local availability of TCL FreshIN air conditioners in the Philippines were not included in the announcement. Check tcl.com/ph for updated product listings.
