Romania - a powerful aerospace player in communist times - is slowly winning back its status in the global industry, the head of its trade association said at ILA.
In the Ceausescu era, Romanian aerospace companies employed 30,000 people and sold aircraft throughout the Eastern bloc and developing world.
Now that figure is just 4,500, and many of its former state-owned businesses have struggled to find new markets in a much more open global economy as government funding dried up.
However, investment and supplier contracts from European heavyweights have begun to reap rewards. Eurocopter has run a joint venture manufacturing company with local firm IAR Brasov for 10 years and is negotiating with the Bucharest government to secure a stake in IAR itself.
"We are very confident about the future," says Mihail Nicolae Toncea, chairman of the Association of Romanian Aeronautical Companies, who is at ILA with seven other exhibitors in a national pavilion in hall 7: Aerofina, Aerostar, Comoti, GIAR, IAR, Iarom and Incas.
In March, EADS-owned Premium Aerotec began a €45 million ($54 million) project to build a plant in Ghimbav, which will open this year. The factory will employ 300 people initially, although an eventual workforce of 700 is being targeted.
The move was tied to an offset obligation that followed the award to EADS of a contract to supply a European Union border protection system along the Romanian border.
Romanian companies also manufacture subcontracted assemblies for the likes of AgustaWestland, Airbus, Alenia, EADS and Fokker.
"We had a very developed industry before the Second World War, but the Russians came and ruined it," says Toncea. "During the Ceausescu times it was born again, but after 1990 the state disappeared from the equation and we lost our markets and the state investment overnight, so we were on our own. But we have the patience to start all over again."
He adds: "Romanian aerospace exports will rise exponentially in the next three or four years. I expect globalisation to continue, but it must be done in an honest way, with a real commercial basis."
Source: Flight Daily News
