AIMEE TURNER/ARNSTADT
Rolls-Royce and Lufthansa Technik (LHT) have struck out into virgin aerospace territory with the official launch of a strategic €100 million ($127 million) investment in a new Trent family engine overhaul facility in a lower-cost region that was once in East Germany.
N3 Engine Overhaul Services, a joint venture between maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) provider LHT and R-R at Arnstadt in the German state of Thuringia will create 500 jobs by 2009 in an unemployment blackspot that has no industrial aerospace heritage and which has been hit hard by German reunification. Labour costs are as a result potentially 30% lower than for western German MRO.
R-R chief operating officer John Cheffins says the decision to choose Arnstadt ultimately rested on logistical and general infrastructure benefits, plus language skills. “We saw a lot of competition and looked at potential locations in Germany, throughout Europe and in particular former Soviet satellite states,” he adds.
The new N3 facility, which is on a 12Ha (29 acre) industrial site close to Erfurt, will start operations in April next year – employing an initial 300 staff overhauling at least 40 engines in its first year and increasing to 100 within two years, – comprising R-R Trent 500, 700 and 900 engines.
The joint venture had been under discussion since Lufthansa selected the Trent 900 to power the 15 Airbus A380s it has ordered. Lufthansa also has Trent 500-powered A340-600s and, once the carrier chose Trent 700s to power the 10 A330-300s it ordered in 2002, its maintenance affiliate decided to enter the Trent market. Engine maintenance will start on the Trent 900 in around three years, after the service entry of the A380.
Work on Lufthansa’s Trent-powered fleet is expected to account for 40% of N3´s business, while another 40% is being allocated by R-R from engines under its Total Care overhaul programme. The other 20% will come from third-party business.
Up to €30 million is being funded by the regional development agency LEG Thuringen, which receives infrastructural Objective One infrastructure funding from the European Union for deprived regions. This helped pay for the 250km (160 mile) rail extension into the site that will transport the engines directly from Munich and Frankfurt airports.
Source: Flight International
