By Tim Hepher

AL AIN, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) - Ross Bradley welcomes a delegation of aerospace suppliers in from the blistering heat of the Arabian desert and cools them down with some refreshingly candid advice.

"You are too expensive. Please take this message back. We will not put up with prices we are paying today. Unaffordable."

The welcome speech may not always be soothing to the ear but industry visitors keep flocking to the remote oasis town of Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates to see one of the world's newest and best-equipped aerospace factories.

They are drawn by the dramatic rise of an ambitious and increasingly powerful player in the fast-growing aerospace industry, which is investing to make jets cheaper to fly.

Flanked by dunes on an ancient Frankincense route from Yemen to Mesopotamia, the factory is designed to help make lightweight carbon jets that will open up the trade lanes of the future.

It sprang from the desert in record time to spearhead Abu Dhabi's ambitions to diversify its oil-dependent economy and produce high-tech jobs for the company's mainly female local workforce.

"We put the first spade into the sand in September 2009 and when we started you couldn't get here in a vehicle; you had to drive by 4x4 and then walk," says Bradley, chief executive of Strata, the aerostructures business funded by Abu Dhabi.

The project is part of efforts by the UAE's main exporting emirate to boost the non-oil economy to 56 percent of GDP by 2020 and 64 percent in 2030, up from 41 percent in 2005-07.

It is trying to do what many have long considered impossible - to challenge the biggest parts industry players from Asia to the United States in a short time and at even lower cost, while developing a previously unproven workforce.

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UAE's aerospace dream blooms in the desert