China – Aerospace trade mission 2017
Last Monday, twelve Dutch companies and Research Establishments have had a whole day of technical workshops with over 70 Chinese participants throughout the whole Chinese Aviation industry. The themes were Aircraft Structures & Materials, Aero-Engines and Air Traffic Management, Airborne Equipment & Systems. The discussions have led to 35 leads for new projects. In addition there was a G2G meeting about the progress of the Dutch-Chinese collaboration in the themes, attended by Chinese and Dutch experts. The rest of the week was filled with workshops and company visits in Shanghai and Xi’an.
In Shanghai China’s Aircraft manufacturer COMAC and Aircraft engine manufacturer AECC were visited. The visit to the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute COMAC-SADRI has led to multiple concrete leads.
At AECC Commercial Aircraft Engine (AECC-CAE) the Dutch delegation was the first official foreign delegation since the foundation of this new entity a year ago. The group had the attention of the highest management. There were eight workshops in total on the areas of: General Aero-Engine Development, Engine Wiring, Materials, System Engineering and more.
At the end of the visit the parties were allowed to visit the Production Facilities of the company, which was a very unique opportunity, since they were the first foreign delegation allowed to do that.
Also the AVIC Subsidiary CARERI (Chinese Aeronautical Radio Electronics Research Institute) was visited in Shanghai. The company had a concrete list of five projects on the area of Avionics and ATM, in which they want to collaborate with NLR and ADSE.
The last two days of the visit was in Xi’an, the parties NLR, ADSE, Straaltechniek, NAG and Fokker were present. ADSE, NLR and ACTRI plus six Chinese parties had a joint workshop about ATM systems and certifications. A list of project proposals will be set up in the upcoming weeks.
On the last day the delegation visited three companies. The first one was the AVIC Subsidiary Xi’an Flight Automatic Control Research Institute (FACRI), they showed interest in their continuous descent method for ATM. The group was very impressed by the facilities they were allowed to see.
The second company was XAIC which produces a lot of components for COMAC, AVIC but also for the Airbus A320 and for other foreign aircrafts. At the end of the workshop, the delegation was allowed to see the production facilities. Last, the Dutch delegation met a group of the AVIC Flight Test Centrum (AVIC-FTC). The idea was to find out how this group supports COMAC at the Flight Test Programme of the C919. Eventually they spoke about other collaborating projects on the area of Human Factors and other measuring methods the NLR has developed.
During this visit, the Dutch cluster has met over 250 persons from over 30 Chinese companies. The delegation has visited seven parties. The long list of leads and actions will be further defined in the upcoming weeks and months. One topic that needs further discussion is the implementation of the MoU between EZ and MIIT. In particular the financing instruments need better understanding and improvement.