Aerospace giant CASIC also invites private firms to take part in its commercial rocket project

One of China's largest state-owned defense contractors will announce outsourcing deals worth billions of yuan this year, a move that is expected to benefit private enterprises.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, the nation's largest missile manufacturer, says it plans to procure 43 billion yuan ($6.6 billion; 5.7 billion euros) worth of products and services from Chinese companies through CASICloud, an online international industrial platform in China.

Based on specific requirements, contract winners will be asked to provide research and development services, to make components or entire pieces of equipment, or to conduct tests or measurements for the company.

Lyu Xiaoge, a spokesman for CASIC, says the procurement needs were decided after collecting and analyzing outsourcing plans from the company's subsidiaries. They will be gradually published on the CASICloud website.

The move aims to increase the company's business transparency, reduce its outsourcing costs, and attract better suppliers. It also intends to set a good example for other Chinese enterprises in terms of taking advantage of the internet and fulfilling the supply-side structural reform, which was launched by the central government late last year to improve China-made products, Lyu says.

CASICloud was launched in June. Nearly 94,000 Chinese and foreign companies have registered on the site since then. Lyu says more than 28,000 contracts with a total 1.6 billion yuan have been inked through the website.

In another development, CASIC has invited private enterprises to take part in its commercial rocket project.

The company's Fourth Academy recently commissioned a private company (it has not revealed the name) to develop and manufacture a composite-material case for the Kuaizhou 11 solid-fuel rocket's engine.

The academy would need at least three years to develop and make the engine case, as it would have to build a new plant for the component. By comparison, the private company has promised to make delivery within nine months.

"This private company is speedy in decision-making, product development and material purchases, which allows it to reduce the period required for production by two months and reduce the cost by more than 50 percent," says Liang Jiqiu, chief designer of the Kuaizhou 11.

His academy began to develop Kuaizhou solid-fuel rockets in 2009, intending to form a low-cost, quick-response rocket family for the commercial launch market.

The first in the family, Kuaizhou 1, was launched in September 2013 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province, putting an Earth observation satellite into orbit. In November 2014, the Kuaizhou 2 sent another satellite into space from the same center.

The academy is now making the Kuaizhou 11 and plans to launch it around 2017, according to the designer.

An earlier report by the Economic Information Daily quoted sources from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as saying that the market value of space launch service, satellite applications as well as space-based internet will reach around 800 billion yuan by the end of 2020.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page27)