A rush of new and expanded CFM56 overhaul shops in China planned for the next several years is likely to leave the country with more capacity than even its burgeoning engine population needs.

Executives involved in the expansion are looking more closely at getting work from abroad, opening a new phase in China's move into the international aerospace market. Experience suggests that they could be quite competitive.

Three companies have revealed plans and now a fourth, Sichuan Snecma Aero-Engine Maintenance, will join in the sudden craze for adding Chinese capacity to overhaul CFM International CFM56 engines used on Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family aircraft.

If the stated plans of all four companies eventuate, then Chinese capacity to repair and overhaul CFM56s should rise sixfold in the next five years or so to perhaps 900 shop visits annually. The current two shops are handling about 150 a year amid what two senior managers call a rough balance of supply and demand. Airline fleet growth, meanwhile, suggests that Chinese demand for CFM56 work will only about double in the same period.

Admittedly, some or all of the players could fail to meet their capacity targets. It won't be easy to ramp up as quickly as some of them project, not least because mechanics will be hard to find. But even assuming that companies broadly miss targets, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that within a few years China will be able to handle considerably more CFM56 shop visits than its own airlines need.

The biggest current operator in the field is MTU Maintenance Zhuhai, whose capacity is some 200 shop visits a year. Probably only about half of those engines are CFM56s, since the facility also works on IAE V2500 engines. The profitable five-year-old operation at Zhuhai in southern China will launch an expansion in 2009 or 2010 that could lift capacity as far as 350 engines a year with only marginal additions to its plant and workforce (AW&ST Oct. 15, 2007, p. 58).

"To keep up with demand, we definitely have to expand," says Holger Sindemann, the new chief executive of the company, which is jointly owned by MTU Aero Engines and China Southern Airlines, its main customer.

Sindemann is not the only one eyeing the rising demand, however.

Sichuan Snecma will expand after it is converted from a partnership between Snecma and Air China into one between CFM (40%) and Air China (60%), says Mike Wilking, GE Aviation's president for the China region. The plant can now handle only 50 engines a year, and more capacity will be needed immediately after the reorganization, says Wilking. Then it will need to grow again within a few years.