Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury says escalating trade tensions will harm the global aerospace industry.PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/Reuters
The head of Europe’s Airbus SE says it is too early to talk about acquiring a Belfast factory placed on sale by Montreal-based Bombardier Inc.
Bombardier said this month that it would sell the plant, which makes wings for the C Series jet. Airbus bought the money-losing C Series program from Bombardier last year while leaving it with control of the aerostructures operations.
Analysts have said the plant could be attractive to Airbus, but CEO Guillaume Faury told reporters on Thursday that the discussion was “premature.”
The C Series, renamed the A220, is the first commercial aircraft to use a new form of carbon-fibre manufacturing called resin transfer infusion.
Current models of lightweight planes such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 are built from carbon fibre impregnated with resin, called “prepreg.” This is tailored into plane parts and cured inside pressurized ovens or autoclaves.
Under the new technology, instead of using fibre that is pre-impregnated with resin, parts are made from a dry textile which is placed in a mould and then infused with resin in the factory to reduce waste and speed production.
The next step is to dispense with the energy-hungry and bulky autoclaves as Russia has begun doing with its MC-21 jet.
Airbus is interested in both stages of the new technology as it prepares for high-speed composite jet production, industry sources say. It has called the plant a “key supplier” but declined to say if it would buy it or a sister plant in Morocco.