South Korea-based Hanwha Aerospace (part of the Hanwha Group) plans to significantly ramp up its production of civil aircraft aero-engine parts (fans and compressors) for the global aerospace market, as a new manufacturing facility in Vietnam nears completion.

Building work on the new 60,000m²factory near Hanoi should be finished by the end of this year. Once it is fully operational, Hanwha Aerospace expects to increase its sales turnover to 1 trillion won ($879 million) — and to lead the aero-engine production industry by 2025.

To help the company achieve its ambitions, it is investing heavily in large-capacity Doosan vertical ram-type lathes (VTRs).

The new Vietnam factory should contain 30 Doosan VTRs by the end of January — increasing to 120 by 2024.

The Doosan machines will be VTR 1012F and VTR 1216F models, which have a fixed cross beam, as opposed to a travelling cross beam.

As such, they are particularly well suited to the machining of shorter components such as aero-engine rings.

Tony Dale, technical director at Mills CNC (www.millscnc.co.uk) — the exclusive distributor of Doosan machine tools in the UK and Ireland — said: “Across the world, Doosan machine tools are specified by global aerospace OEMs and by leading manufacturers in the aerospace supply chain.

"Hanwha Aerospace supplies aero-engine parts to GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, to name but a few.

"The sheer scale of this investment — 120 machines in five years — is truly remarkable.”