Daher plans to start assembling TBM aircraft at its new Florida campus in 2027 as part of a strategy to expand capacity to meet a growing orderbook and hedge against possible US tariffs on European imports.
The French manufacturer – most of whose customers are in the USA – also intends to introduce an assembly line at the Stuart facility for its Kodiak series of utility aircraft, currently built in Sandpoint, Idaho – although this will come later, says chief executive Didier Kayat.
It comes as the family-owned company – which also has aerostructures, logistics, and industrial services divisions – on 5 February reported revenues of €1.8 billion ($1.88 billion) for 2024, up from €1.65 billion the previous year. This was helped by strong aircraft deliveries, at 82 units compared with 74 in 2023.
Daher acquired the Stuart factory in 2022 from Triumph – with whom it is embroiled in a legal dispute over the due diligence process. The facility makes aerostructures, including the centre fuselage section for Boeing’s 767 freighter and related KC-46 tanker, and the purchase made Daher a supplier to the US airframer for the first time.
Daher now plans to start construction around September on an adjacent new-build assembly line, which will be able to produce up to 60 aircraft a year, roughly the capacity of its TBM line in Tarbes, France. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had secured a long-term lease with landowner Florida’s Martin County, allowing building to start.
With Daher taking orders for 200 TBM and Kodiak aircraft over the past two years – and its largely owner-pilot customers reluctant to have lengthy waits for deliveries – there is a pressing need to increase capacity. “We must deliver faster,” says Kayat.
Daher produces far fewer Kodiak aircraft than TBMs – 11 Kodiak 900s and 15 Kodiak 100s compared with 56 TBM 960s last year. However, increasing output at the Sandpoint facility is in itself difficult because high property prices in the ski resort make it hard to recruit blue-collar workers, maintains Kayat. “Real estate is expensive, so it makes sense to expand to Florida with a dual assembly line in the near future,” he says.
With four out of five TBM aircraft operated in the USA, it also makes sense to have domestic production if the Trump administration ends up imposing tariffs on European aircraft, maintains Kayat. “We had some trade risks with tariffs eight years ago. We hope [a] Trump 2.0 [administration] takes into account warnings from [the General Aviation Manufacturers Association] and others, but if they don’t it makes sense to have a TBM line where we have 80% of our sales,” he says.
Although Daher has been making progress on its five-year plan to transform the company by 2027 – shedding non-core activities to focus on the aerospace sector, increasing profitability, and becoming a €2 billion revenue business – it faces challenges, particularly in its aerostructures division.
Last March, Dassault Aviation chief executive Eric Trappier singled out late and incomplete deliveries from Daher, GKN Aerospace, and Latecoere for contributing to lower-than-expected output of Falcon jets in 2023.
Kayat acknowledges that the division has faced similar challenges to its peers – who also include Triumph and Spirit AeroSystems – and is loss-making, but that, unlike its “pure play” rivals Daher has other profitable units to balance the deficit. “We are losing money but not at the group level, so we are a more resilient player than our competitors,” he says.
Daher is in the process of transferring aerostructures work on the A320 family at two sites near Nantes in France to Airbus Atlantic, a process Kayat hopes will be concluded by June.
The company is about 18 months into its protracted dispute with Triumph after discovering what it says were undisclosed issues with the plant concerning software licences and unpaid supplier invoices. Kayat says it meant “we had to work hard to win back Boeing’s trust” and concedes that “had we had the right information at the right time, we might not have gone ahead [with the acquisition]”.
