Duoli Technology's gigacasting plant in Jintan, Changzhou, is running three large die-casting machines at full capacity and shipping up to 35,000 one-piece rear underbody castings a month, according to a report published by the Jintan District government on October 7, 2026. The plant, built mainly to supply Li Auto, is now co-developing two new underbody castings with SAIC and GM, with trial production scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026 and volume deliveries phasing in from 2027. For casting buyers, the headline is not the tonnage. It is that gigacasting has moved from EV startup experiments to programs with two of the world's largest conventional carmakers, at yields above 90%.
Three Large Cells at Full Load, 200,000 Floor Castings This Year
The Jintan plant has completed 200,000 floor casting sets so far in 2026, and sales have grown five- to six-fold versus the same period last year, the district government report said. One rear underbody casting comes off the machine roughly every two minutes, after which a robot removes it for trimming and finishing.
Wu Guangjian, the plant's equipment director, described the consolidation effect: a floor assembly that previously required more than 70 stamped and welded parts now comes out of the press as one piece, cutting the process chain by 60 to 70 percent. A part that once took hours now goes from die casting to finished state in two to three hours.
Quality control at the plant runs on three layers, according to the report:
- One full day per week is reserved for machine and die maintenance.
- Every casting carries a unique code in the plant's MES system, which logs water temperature, die temperature, and coolant flow in real time, so any defective part can be traced to a specific machine and shift.
- Coordinate measuring machines, blue-light scanning, and routine line inspections verify parts downstream, holding yield above 90%.
Deputy general manager Lu Haiping called Jintan the most automated plant in the Duoli group. Duoli plans to install two more large die-casting systems over the next quarter and into 2027, and to expand beyond floor castings into other product categories.
From EV Startups to SAIC and GM
Jintan was established primarily to serve Li Auto, with Ninebot among its early customers, and the district government frames the two new SAIC and GM floor programs as the point where the customer base widens to traditional carmakers. Several of Duoli's global customers have visited the plant this year.
Duoli, founded in 1998 as a maker of stamped and welded body parts, committed RMB 3 billion (about $420 million) to the Jintan gigacasting and chassis-structures plant in September 2023. The company built its gigacasting business on Buhler Carat machines, ordering a 6,100-ton Carat 610 and a 9,200-ton Carat 920 in 2021-2022 and four more Carat 920s for Jintan in early 2024. Its Lu'an plant already supplies gigacast parts in volume for some NIO models.
What Gigacasting Economics Mean for Casting Buyers
- Gigacasting is now a quoting reality, not a concept. A supplier running 35,000 large castings a month at 90%+ yield sets the benchmark traditional OEMs will reference when they specify one-piece structures. Expect more RFQs for large structural parts to assume gigacasting from the start.
- Traceability is becoming table stakes. MES-level part coding and real-time process logging are no longer premium features on large programs. Buyers of any casting size can reasonably ask suppliers for the same discipline: per-part traceability, documented melt and die parameters, and CMM verification.
- Small and medium parts are not going away. Gigacasting replaces large assemblies of stamped parts. The brackets, housings, and covers that make up most casting spend still run on conventional 160T-1650T machines, where die cost and cycle economics favor experienced mid-tonnage suppliers.
How We Read This at Meituo
Duoli's numbers confirm what we see from the production side: the competitive gap in die casting is no longer about who owns the largest machine, but about who holds yield and traceability at volume. Our own operation runs 20 aluminum die casting machines from 160T to 1650T with the same disciplines described in the Jintan report: spectrometer-controlled melts, per-part process records, and CMM and X-ray inspection under IATF 16949. For parts below the gigacasting size range, that combination of process control and mid-tonnage flexibility is where we compete. If your program mixes large structures with the brackets and housings around them, our aluminum die casting team can quote the conventional side while you source the gigacast components elsewhere. See our full manufacturing capabilities for the equipment list.
Sources
- Jintan District People's Government, Duoli Automotive: Integrated Die Casting Cuts Out Production Steps (Chinese), October 7, 2026
- The Gigacasting Newsletter, Duoli's Jintan Gigacasting Plant Develops Rear Underbodies For SAIC And GM, October 12, 2026
- 36Kr, Duoli Technology to Invest RMB 3 Billion in Precision Parts and Integrated Chassis Structures Plant (Chinese), September 8, 2023
- Sina Finance, Duoli Technology: Integrated Die Cast Parts for Some NIO Models in Volume Supply (Chinese), October 16, 2024
