Premium Aerotec is "100%" on time and on-quality to deliver key A350 XWB fuselage sections to parent Airbus, starting next May or early June, according to chief executive Hans Lonsinger.
For the A350, Premium Aerotec will first deliver elements of fuselage sections 13/14, for which it makes the side shells, upper and lower shells, floor grid and door frames and barrel assembly.
It is also making sections 16/18, including the side shells, floor grid and aft pressure bulkhead.
Other A350 work packages could still be won, says Lonsinger, who describes the in-development Airbus big twin as his company's major project of the moment.
Premium Aerotec was carved out of Airbus as of 1 January 2009, when a deal to spin off the airframer's Germany-based aerostructures factories failed to come to fruition. That sale had been part of Airbus's Power8 restructuring plan. A similar effort to sell its French aerostructures business also fell foul of the economic crisis, resulting in the creation of a French counterpart to Premium Aerotec, Aerolia. Both companies are 100%-owned subsidiaries of Airbus.
As a long-term objective, Premium Aerotec is aiming to increase the non-Airbus - or EADS - share of its revenue. The company at present is a supplier to the Boeing 787, but its other key programmes are all EADS or Airbus projects: the Eurofighter, the A400M, the Airbus single and double-aisle ranges, the Panavia Tornado and the Barracuda unmanned systems demonstrator.
Lonsinger stresses that growth outside EADS/Airbus will only come with new programmes, including in Russia and China, as it makes no sense to invest in tooling to join a legacy programme. Obvious candidates for Premium Aerotec interest over the next 10 years include next-generation - or re-engined - Airbus and Boeing single-aisle airliners as well as United Aircraft's MS-21.
Separately, Premium Aerotec is getting ready to start production in October at its new plant in Brasov, Romania. That plant, which will be fully completed in 2011, will make sheet metal fuselage parts for Airbus A320, A330 and A380, as well as machined aluminium parts up to a size that would fit in a 500 x 500mm (19.7 x 19.7in) cube.
Source: Flight Daily News
