Kobe Steel, Hitachi Metals to Launch Airplane Forging Parts JV

Kobe Steel, Hitachi Metals, IHI Corporation and Kawasaki Heavy Industries announced on Tuesday they established their joint venture, Japan Aeroforge to make large forgings of titanium, nickel and high alloys for aircrafts and power plant. They build new plant in Kurashiki, Okayama for 20 billion yen to start mass production in 2014. The joint venture targets 13 billion yen of sales in fiscal 2017 ending March 2018.

World airplane industry is expected to grow by annualized 4-5%. IHI and Kawasaki Heavy Industries try to secure large forging parts trough the venture to follow the growing demand. Kobe Steel and Hitachi Metals expand the sales for airplane and power plant through the venture.

The venture with 5 million yen of capital was established on January 21. The firm plans allocation of new shares to the 4 owners, Marubeni-Itochu Steel and Sojitz Aerospace in April. After the capital increase to 3.7 billion yen, Kobe Steel and Hitachi Metals have 40.53% each in the firm with 5.41% share each by IHI, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Marubeni-Itochu Steel and 2.7% share by Sojitz Aerospace.

The venture will complete the construction of the new plant in March 2012. The plant will start commercial operation in 2014 after the approvals from the users. The firm has Japanese first 50,000 tonnes forging press to make precise nickel and titanium products. The firm provides large forgings stably while the firm tries to realize competitive cost by recycling scrap and reducing rare metals consumption.

The firm procures provides titanium, nickel and high alloys from Hitachi Metals, Kobe Steel and other materials makers. Japan Aeroforge makes large forgings and ships the parts to the materials makers for heat treatment. After the treatment and inspection, the materials makers ship the parts to machinery makers.