TIANJIN, Sept. 10 - Tianjin Astar Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. held a groundbreaking ceremony on September 10 for its intelligent manufacturing base project, Phase II of its headquarters base, in Huaming High-tech Zone, Dongli District, Tianjin.

The facility, located east of No. 10 Hongtai Road, spans 125 mu (about 8.3 hectares) with roughly 62,000 square meters of floor space. It will comprise three core segments: an R&D center, an expanded production line for lightweight aircraft components, and an intelligent manufacturing industrial park for lightweight launch vehicle components, forming a high-end aerospace lightweight industrial base that integrates technology R&D, process validation, and large-scale manufacturing.

"Once Phase II is completed, it will create large-scale industrial capacity to address the batch production challenges facing commercial rocket companies," said Zhang Yi, Chairman and CEO of Astar Aerospace. "Large-scale production can lower the overall development cost of rockets and improve rapid response capabilities."

Centered on the innovative integration of new aerospace materials, the project aims to drive deep convergence between advanced materials such as carbon fiber composites and aerospace structural design and advanced manufacturing. It is intended to strengthen the company's mass-production capabilities and technological iteration foundation and to serve as a demonstration base for intelligent technology-enabled advanced composite manufacturing in high-end equipment.

The groundbreaking marks a key step in the company's push into the commercial aerospace sector. Astar Aerospace said it will continue to prioritize "hard tech" R&D, advance iterative innovation and engineering applications of new technologies, materials, processes, and equipment for national key application scenarios, deepen industry-academia-research collaboration, and accelerate the commercialization of high-tech achievements. It also aims to continuously improve manufacturing capacity and delivery efficiency for products including launch vehicle fairings, defense equipment components, industrial drone structures, and lightweight rail transit components.

"Phase I of our headquarters already brought fiber, equipment, and parts manufacturers into the surrounding area in Dongli, forming a small industrial chain," Zhang said in an interview. "Once this headquarters base is completed, structural and system integration can be achieved on a one-stop basis in Tianjin, and this park will play an important role."

The project is also expected to leverage the clustering effect of a leading enterprise to attract upstream and downstream aerospace resources, build a well-developed industrial ecosystem, support coordinated innovation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and strengthen the region's strategic emerging industries, continuing to inject private-sector scientific innovation momentum into China's commercial aerospace sector.