In early 2024, I received a call from a quality manager at an aerospace melting plant in Sichuan Province. His company produces aluminium alloy castings for commercial aircraft programmes. They had been supplying non-critical parts for five years. Now,...

Aerospace-grade aluminium is not just cleaner than commercial-grade. It is a different class of material. The hydrogen content must be below 0.06 ml/100g. The inclusion count must be measured in parts per billion, not parts per million. And e...

In early 2024, I received an email from a procurement manager at a US aerospace supplier. His company produces precision aluminium components for commercial aircraft. They had been sourcing castings from a Chinese foundry for three years. The quality w...

China’s aerospace aluminium industry is at a crossroads. The demand has never been stronger. The technology has never been closer. But the gap between what China can produce and what its aerospace programmes actually need remains wider than most people...