Aerospace-grade aluminium alloys and CFRP composites

India consumed 5.6 kilotons of carbon fibre in 2024. As of 2025, it produced none of it: for raw carbon fibre and the precursor it starts from, the country is 100% import-dependent, buying from Hyosung Advanced Materials, Toray, Teijin and Syensqo.

These are the primary structural materials of flight — high-strength aluminium alloys for riveted airframes and propellant tanks, and carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP) for the light, stiff structures that modern airframes and rockets demand. Only a handful of nations make them at aerospace grade: the United States, Japan, China, Germany, France and Taiwan. The difficulty is not the chemistry alone but the chain around it — capital-intensive plants, and certification cycles that qualify not just a part but the process that made it.

India's position is a study in split capability. On aluminium, it stands. Hindalco-Almex Aerospace, operating a 12,000-tonne-per-annum plant since 2008, is the first and only Indian maker of aerospace and defence-grade aluminium hard alloys, supplying HAL, ISRO and missile programmes across the 2xxx, 6xxx and 7xxx series. ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre uses AA 2219 and 2024 for launch vehicles and has developed carbon-carbon composite nozzles through carbonisation, chemical vapour infiltration and high-temperature treatment.

On composites, India makes parts but not the material. Kineco Aerospace has delivered components for LVM3-CMS03, Chandrayaan-3 and OneWeb from a Goa facility with autoclaves, CNC machines and clean rooms. HAL and NAL run in-house composite manufacturing; Bhor Chemicals produces prepregs and epoxy resins; Aeron Composite is a certified DRDO and HAL supplier. But at the raw material level — fibres, resins, prepregs — the market remains dominated by international suppliers.

Why the gap persists lies beneath the finished part. The precursor, PAN (polyacrylonitrile), and carbon-fibre tow production have no indigenous base; both are rated critical dependencies. India's composites market is also fiercely price-sensitive — glass fibre holds a 98.5% volume share against 1.5% for the carbon and aramid fibres that aerospace needs. High capital intensity and stringent aerospace qualification have kept private capacity from forming around such thin demand.

That is now changing. Reliance Industries aims to complete the first phase of a 20,000-MTPA carbon fibre plant at Hazira during 2025. Jindal Advanced Materials, in a March 2024 agreement with Italy's MAE S.p.A., committed Rs 2,700 crore to a 3,500-MT plant, expandable to 10,000 MT by 2027. Closing the gap means building the full chain — precursor to fibre to qualified composite — at a scale that outlasts a price-sensitive market.