The Hindu Business Line : First carbon fibre plant ready for production

The Rs 30-crore, indigenous carbon fibre manufacturing plant, which will feed the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), as well as civilian SARAS aircraft, among other applications, is ready for commercial production.

"The process of quality certification of the carbon fibres is under way, and we expect that everything would be ready by March 2007," said Mr A.R. Upadhya, Director, National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), Bangalore.

The 20-tonnes-per-year capacity plant at NAL campus is a joint initiative of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and NAL. It will be able to meet the demands of LCA, Agni missile, projects of the Indian Space Research Organisation as strategic material and also some commercial industry.

Project details

Giving details of the project progress, Dr Upadhaya told newspersons on the sidelines of the two-day national conference on composites organised by the ISAMPE (Indian Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering), here recently that NAL was talking to private industry for upscaling capacity and commercial production.

In NAL's passenger aircraft SARAS, whose third prototype is under development, a conscious decision has been taken to reduce the weight. The use of carbon fibres will make it happen. Similarly, in the missiles, civilian aircraft, use of this lightweight, tough and anti-corrosive, carbon fibre-based composites is underway.

The demand for carbon fibres is so high that aircraft major like Boeing has booked large portion of the material from wherever it is produced. With the civil aviation sector to boom in India, the demand for the material would be high. As strategic use, the Indian missiles will be a major customer, Dr Avinash Chander, Director of Advances Systems Laboratory, and Programme Director of Agni, said.

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