Aerostructures and components manufacturer GKN Aerospace is at Paris hoping to deepen its ties with all the major civil and defence airframers, but has its sights set on one in particular.

"We are well-placed with some customers but others we would like to increase [our business with] such as Boeing, which is currently just a small part of our portfolio - we would dearly like to extend that relationship," says technical director Rich Oldfield.

The US firm only accounts for 13% of GKN's customer sales, compared with 22% at EADS.

"The show offers us a good opportunity to interact with companies and we aim to grow deeper relationships with our customers and think what our programmes are about, what's the next technology to help them in the development of current and future products," Oldfield adds.

UK-headquartred GKN, which specialises in high-value, complex structures, is also looking to extend its reach into new markets such as Asia and will open a new advanced engineering centre in Bangalore, India in August to provide engineering resources to the company's international aerospace projects.

Other areas of growth for GKN include Mexico, where the company opened a new composites manufacturing facility last year.

Oldfield says the company is doing "more and more" critical work with original equipment manufacturers, as providing solutions using advanced manufacturing technologies is where the company can offer its customers "the most value".

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Source: Flight Daily News