Henri-Paul Puel, the new president of Sogerma has set about a major re-organisation of the loss-making maintenance arm of Aerospatiale, partly blaming poor recent performance on a series of misjudged deals struck before his arrival.
The action follows a disappointing year for Sogerma, which saw its net losses mushroom to Fr203 million ($36 million) despite a 12% rise in sales to Fr3.3 billion and a general strengthening in the maintenance market. Puel, who had headed ATRand then the Aero International (Regional) joint venture until mid-1996, believes that the business will be back in profit by the end of this month.
Three of the five major Sogerma divisions continued to record modest profits in 1996, including the Seca unit. They were offset by losses at US subsidiary Barfield, hampered by a weak performance of its Avsco distribution division, and also at the Revima venture, which is 40%held by Air France.
Reforms include transferring all gas-turbine repair and maintenance activities from Revima to Seca, and creating a new overhaul line for the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100 turboshaft, which Puel says will rank second only to P&WC's own in Montreal. This will become operational in September. Revima will concentrate its activities on repair of large landing gear, with plans to become second only to BFGoodrich.
Puel blames at least some of the losses on the willingness of his predecessors to over-inflate the order book and sign loss-making deals, to prepare the company for privatisation, which, he adds, is "not on the cards at present".
He points to the Polaris deal with the Canadian Government for the conversion of four Airbus A310-300s to combi configuration, which lost Fr50 million.
Source: Flight International
