Beehive Industries, the Denver-based maker of additively manufactured jet engines for uncrewed defense systems, is investing $70 million to expand its Southwest Ohio operations, creating more than 200 new jobs. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, JobsOhio and REDI Cincinnati joined the company to announce the expansion this week at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK, where officials said the collaboration is expected to speed up growth across advanced aerospace manufacturing, the local workforce, and sustained investment in the state.
“Beehive Industries’ decision to grow in Southwest Ohio demonstrates once again that our state is the best place in America to do business and the best place to strengthen our national defense,” said Governor Mike DeWine. “This investment puts our state at the forefront of building the engines our military needs, and we’ll be doing it faster than anyone thought possible.”
Engineering speed into propulsion
Jet engine development has long been the slowest, priciest piece of standing up any new defense program, and Beehive says its model breaks that pattern. Rather than retrofitting conventional engines for 3D printing, the company engineered its propulsion systems around additive manufacturing from the start, building a supply chain that’s both fully domestic and entirely self-contained. The result, Beehive says, is that timelines conventional engine programs measure in years shrink to months, while cost and scalability improve enough to give U.S. defense customers an edge competitors can’t match.
That edge is being tested by demand for Beehive’s Frenzy engine family, which the company says is entering full-rate production. In April, the U.S. Air Force awarded Beehive a $29.7 million contract to complete vehicle integration, flight testing and qualification of its 200 lbf Frenzy 8 engine, along with funding to advance the smaller 100 lbf Frenzy 6. The award, managed through the SOSSEC consortium, supports a Small Expendable Turbine prototyping effort under the Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Munitions initiative, a Pentagon-wide push to shift from expensive, low-quantity weapons toward large-scale, cost-effective systems.
To keep pace with that demand, Beehive has moved fast on capacity. In June, Beehive committed more than $50 million to 30 EOS M4 ONYX metal 3D printers, described by EOS as the largest single publicly disclosed order in the German manufacturer’s history. The machines, headed to Beehive’s Knoxville, Tennessee and Centennial, Colorado sites over the next 12 months, will bring the company’s installed EOS fleet to 50 systems and more than double its metal additive manufacturing capacity.
Days later, Beehive acquired two Greater Cincinnati precision machine shops, Able Tool Corporation and its subsidiary Planet Products Corporation, establishing a Production Machining Center of Excellence in the region to pair with a new Production Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Knoxville. Able Tool dates to 1984 and Planet Products to 1947, giving Beehive an immediate, production-ready machining workforce with more than 120 years of combined aerospace experience. Together, the company says the EOS order and the machine shop acquisitions are meant to build the manufacturing system needed to produce more than 8,000 engines annually.
More recently, Beehive placed a multi-unit order for NXG 600E metal 3D printers from Nikon SLM Solutions, part of Nikon Advanced Manufacturing. The purchase is entirely self-funded and gives the company a capability that remains scarce in the United States: ultra-large-format laser powder bed fusion capacity. The NXG 600E is the biggest machine in the Nikon SLM Solutions lineup, combining a 600 x 600 x 1500 mm build envelope with twelve 1 kW lasers for high-throughput serial production of large metal parts.
A defense manufacturing hub in the making
That build-out is landing amid a broader national debate. Officials from Washington to the Midwest increasingly argue that defending the country hinges on manufacturing speed, and that slow permitting, bureaucratic friction, and brittle supply chains amount to a genuine security risk. Ohio and JobsOhio have positioned their “Team Ohio” initiative as a direct answer: construction-ready sites certified ahead of demand, permitting timelines cut to months, fewer regulatory obstacles, and workforce pipelines built to match business speed.
Against that backdrop, JobsOhio’s President and CEO, J.P. Nauseef, cast Beehive as a model example: “Beehive is doing exactly the kind of advanced, mission-critical manufacturing that defines Ohio’s aerospace and defense advantage, and doing it at the speed the customer requires.” He added that Ohio’s environment lets companies move from concept through testing to full-scale production, calling the expansion proof that the state’s business-friendly reputation extends to defense manufacturing specifically.
The state’s support is still taking shape. Beehive intends to pursue a Job Creation Tax Credit through the Ohio Department of Development, pending an upcoming Tax Credit Authority review, and JobsOhio has committed to additional assistance that will be disclosed once terms are finalized, details expected to shape support for the hundreds of jobs the project could eventually generate.
Closing the gap between printers and production
Beehive’s expansion is ultimately about closing the gap between what additive manufacturing can produce and what the Pentagon actually needs at scale. Other propulsion makers are chasing the same gap.
Colorado-based Ursa Major has pursued a similar strategy on the rocket-propulsion side,expanding its solid rocket motor capacity with a 400-acre test facility in Weld County, Colorado, backed by Navy investment, andadding AMCM M 450-4 FLX printers from EOS to scale its Youngstown, Ohio production site.
A similar pattern is playing out at Florida-based Sintavia’s $25 million expansion that added a second Nikon SLM NXG XII 600 printer and new facility space to support U.S. Department of Defense programs through 2030.
Together, Beehive, Ursa Major and Sintavia show the same pattern playing out across U.S. propulsion manufacturing: companies are converting additive capacity into dedicated engine-production facilities to hit the volume and speed the Pentagon says it needs. Ohio, home to production sites for both Beehive and Ursa Major, is emerging as a focal point of that shift.
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Featured image shows From left to right: Kimm Lauterbach, President and CEO, REDI Cincinnati; Gordie Follin, Chief Product Officer, Beehive Industries; Ohio Governor Mike DeWine; and J.P. Nauseef, President and CEO, JobsOhio. Photo via Beehive Industries.
