Jiuquan plans a $500m plant with 100 printers and 6,300 tonnes of metal powder a year
Jiuquan City, in Gansu Province, has put out an EPC general contracting tender for a plant that puts powder production, printing and AI design under one roof. Total investment is 3 billion yuan, about $500 million. Construction is set to start November 1, 2026, with a 395-day build period, putting completion of the build phase around the end of 2027.
The numbers in the tender are specific enough to be worth reading twice. The powder center will run 18 production units for a combined 6,300 tonnes a year, which works out to about 350 tonnes per unit. It specifies the plasma rotating electrode process (PREP), with a stated powder yield of 60%. PREP melts the tip of a rotating metal bar with a plasma arc; the droplets that fly off cool into spherical particles, which is why the process is common for aerospace-grade powder.
The printing side is smaller by comparison: 100 printing units producing 500 tonnes of parts a year. That ratio, 6,300 tonnes of powder against 500 tonnes of printed output, says the site is built to be a powder supplier to the wider region as much as a parts shop. A separate laser-cladding repair center adds four machines.
Three alloy families are named: titanium alloys for lightweight structural parts, superalloys for components that see extreme heat, and copper alloys, used in rocket combustion chambers because they carry heat away well. That spread lines up with engine and structural work rather than one narrow application.
Location matters here. Jiuquan is the city tied to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, so a powder and printing node built there sits close to the launch vehicle makers it would presumably supply, rather than shipping feedstock in from elsewhere in China.
It isn’t the only one. Jiangsu Vilory Advanced Materials just closed a $14.8 million Series C+ round for a fourth-phase expansion targeting 3,000 tonnes of titanium, 5,000 tonnes of copper and 2,000 tonnes of aluminum powder a year, run to “lights-out factory standards,” on top of a Phase III plant already running more than 10 EIGA atomization lines. Separately, a Jingye Group subsidiary has agreed to build a 5 billion yuan plant in Fengshun County, Guangdong, with 400 metal printers, 20 powder lines and 100 MIM lines, aimed at a broader market than aerospace alone.
Lay these three next to each other and a pattern shows up: Chinese powder capacity is being built in the thousands of tonnes ahead of confirmed orders, on the bet that demand catches up. Jiuquan’s project is the one explicitly tied to commercial space rather than general manufacturing.
None of this tells you how much of that powder will actually clear flight-qualification testing, which is the step that turns tonnage into usable aerospace hardware. A tender for 6,300 tonnes of capacity is not the same as 6,300 tonnes of qualified, flight-ready powder, and the gap between the two is where projects like this tend to slip.