INDIA’S MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRY MEETS ITS AEROSPACE MOMENT

At the recent Bangalore Space Expo, held at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC), the conversations kept circling back to the same paradox: India’s aerospace and space manufacturers are scaling up ambitiously, but the Indian machine tool industry needs to brace for rising demand, which is largely being met by companies from Europe and America.

For the machine tool industry, the expanding space, aerospace, and defence ecosystem is opening up a wealth of new opportunities.

India’s space economy, according to the Department of Space, is valued at INR 80,323 crore (US$ 8.4 billion) and is projected to grow about five times to reach INR 3.8 to INR 4.3 lakh crore (US$ 40-45 billion) in a decade. In defence, according to the Ministry of Defence, Government of India, domestic production reached a record INR 0.178 lakh crore (US$ 1.86 billion) in FY2025-26, with exports touching INR 38,424 crore (US$ 4.02 billion). At the same time, the Government of India is pushing aircraft component manufacturing as part of its ambition to establish India as a global aerospace hub.

Across these sectors, ambition is rising swiftly, yet aerospace manufacturers who spoke to the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) said that India’s domestic machine tool industry, while improving rapidly in specific segments, still needs to bridge the gap, as the aerospace sector depends on advanced, high-precision, multi-axis, and material-specific machining.

Where India Already Delivers

Commenting on the state of domestic capability, an aerospace industry representative said that precision manufacturing in India has largely ‘sorted itself out’. Additive manufacturing, which is increasingly central to lightweight aerospace components, is a genuine bright spot for the Indian machine tool industry.

Elsewhere, it is a mixed picture: roll-forming machinery and composite-processing equipment remain underdeveloped domestically. CNC turning centers and VMCs capable of handling large-format parts — those in the 800 mm range that aerospace structures often demand — are not yet made in India at the required scale.

AnduraX, which builds reusable spaceplanes and runs a genuinely hybrid shopfloor, said that high-precision composite machining is done using Indian-made equipment, while ceramic matrix composite machining, a more specialized, heat-tolerant category, is imported.

Another company, which supplies both the aerospace and defence industry, leans further towards imported precision tools from Germany and Italy, citing spindle capacity as the deciding factor. Some of its imported machines carry up to 12 spindles and run 32-axis configurations, against the 12-axis machines typical of domestic equivalents, enabling far greater multitasking on a single component.

What Matters Beyond Capability

Cost, serviceability, lead time, and application requirements all play a role in machine selection. Avasarala Technologies, for example, uses imported milling, turning, wire-cutting, and grinding machines where the combination of machine performance, reliability, and long-term service support makes them the more practical choice for its operations. The experience highlights an important consideration for the next phase of Make in India: adoption will depend not only on machine capability and precision, but also on competitive lifecycle costs, responsive after-sales support, availability of spares, and strong maintenance ecosystems.

Xovian Aerospace’s approach illustrates a further nuance: satellite manufacturing itself is outsourced to established Indian vendors using domestic machine tools. The company uses domestic equipment also for testing, especially for the first few satellites. While Xovian does have in-house testing capacity both domestic and foreign equipment is used for testing. The mix of foreign to domestic testing equipment can be said to be around 40:60 (foreign equipment proportion is around 40%). Using foreign equipment makes sense, if there is a need for specific precision hardware that is not available with Indian vendors or the equipment cannot be fabricated locally.

Industry sources said that some companies source machines from Europe due to accuracy, usage optimization, and lead time, while continuing to buy CNC turning machines and VMCs from Indian manufacturers where domestic capability already meets their needs. According to analysts, ordering a machine domestically today carries a lead time of roughly six months. The gap becomes commercially significant when actual production accuracy requirements, which can be as tight as 0.05 mm on some components, leave little room for delay.

While Indian companies take about six months, imported machines from established international companies carry their own extended waiting periods once shipping, customisation, and installation are factored in. This means that lead time, not just accuracy, is now a live procurement variable across the sector, whichever directions manufacturers ultimately choose.

The Bigger Supply-Chain Question

Taken together, these accounts sketch an industry in transition rather than one cleanly divided between imports and domestic production. India’s machine tool industry has made real headway in additive manufacturing, in mid-range CNC machine tools and VMCs, and in components that do not demand extreme multi-axis precision or exotic material handling. What remains a structural gap is at the high end: large-format turning, ceramic matrix, and composite-specific machining, ultra-high-spindle-count centers, and equipment where servicing infrastructure is still catching up to the machines themselves.

This is precisely where the gap matters most to India’s aerospace and space ambitions, as these are the categories that will determine how quickly indigenous propulsion, satellite, and reusable-vehicle programs can scale. A reduced lead time, manufacturers across the expo agreed, would do more for near-term competitiveness than incremental gains in machine precision alone. The industry consensus pointed towards six months to a year as the workable window aerospace production actually needs, against the considerably longer cycles many currently face.

Building for the Next Phase

India’s machine tool industry is maturing unevenly. It is strongest where volume and standardization help, while specialized, high-precision capabilities required by the aerospace and space sectors remain more challenging to develop.

As India makes rapid advancements in the space, aerospace, and defence sectors, aerospace manufacturers suggest that the next phase of import substitution will depend not on cost alone, but on lead time, servicing depth, and the ability to match the capabilities already delivered by established machine tool makers worldwide — spindle for spindle and micron for micron.

Article compiled with inputs from Avasarala Technologies Ltd, Xovian Aerospace, and AnduraX.

Source: IMTMA