Aerospace industry flourishes in Yantai

Haiyang, China's first homeport for seaborne rocket launches, held the 2023 Oriental Aerospace Port Industrial Development Conference on April 22, which was the eighth Space Day of China.

The conference attracted experts, scholars, investment institutions, banks and enterprises to discuss the region's advancement in the aerospace industry and bolstering Yantai's aerospace industrial cluster.

A batch of fruitful results were achieved during the event including the start of the Yantai Guofeng Shenwan Aerospace Investment Fund, which received a total investment of 2 billion yuan ($288.6 million), and the unveiling of the Geospatial Information Technology Collaborative Innovation Center Intelligent Remote-Sensing Satellite Yantai Base.

Since the offshore launch of a Long March-11 rocket from Haiyang in 2019, Yantai has accelerated the industrial layout in aerospace.

To date, the city has attracted 56 aerospace industry-related enterprises and built six technical service platforms, which form an industrial cluster led by offshore launches, rocket assembly testing, satellite research and development and manufacturing, new aerospace materials and aerospace information applications.  

The city is home to leading enterprises such as Shandong Huayu Construction, Shandong Long March Rocket Co Ltd, Oriental Bluesky Titanium Technology Co Ltd and Nanshan Aluminum.

Yantai has participated in the construction of three national-level platforms: the Aerospace Environmental Reliability Testing and Inspection Center, the Shandong Center for Data and High Resolution Earth Observation System, and the Shandong Beidou 3 Regional Short Message Communication Application Service Platform. It is also building two provincial-level technology centers: the Shandong Micro-Nano Satellite Technology Innovation Center and the Shandong Offshore Aerospace Equipment Technology Innovation Center.

In 2022, the city signed seven projects in the aerospace industry with a contracted amount of 23.7 billion yuan and 21 projects are currently under construction with a total investment of 16 billion yuan. The key projects include the Haiyang Oriental Aerospace Port, which has been listed in the China's Space Activities white paper, the Haiyang Satellite Data Industrial Park, an intelligent remote-sensing satellite, and the Satellite Industrial Park in the Yantai Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone.

China is making big strides in becoming a leading aerospace power. Yantai plans to take advantage of the growth momentum and map out plans to create an industrial ecosystem and launch 15 key projects with a total investment of 30.5 billion yuan in the near future.

Gao Junbo, vice-chairman of the political consultative conference of Yantai and head of the city's aerospace industrial chain, said that Yantai has built the Oriental Aerospace Port Industrial Park in Haiyang and carried out a total of 37 offshore satellite launches. It is constructing key projects such as the Shandong Long March Rocket, the Satellite Data Industrial Park and the first domestic offshore launch ship.

"Yantai strives to build an aerospace industrial cluster integrating offshore launches, satellite and rocket manufacturing, support, aerospace cultural tourism and aerospace information services," Gao said.

The city has constructed a state-of-the-art low-orbit remote sensing-communication-navigation integrated constellation in cooperation with Wuhan University and Piesat as well as other demonstration projects such as the "Yantai Cloud" Satellite Data Cloud Service Platform.

Yantai is also building a world-class offshore launch center with high-end aerospace industrial clusters, and by 2025, the output value of the city's aerospace industry is expected to exceed 50 billion yuan.