China Aviation Industry Corp, Avic I, the largest Country’s plane maker, is all set to invest in or buy all six Airbus plants, including the Filton location near Bristol, that are on the auction radar under the plane maker’s plans to save more than $2.60billion(£1.35bn) a year.
Airbus is auctioning off the plants, located in England, France and Germany, under plans to save more than $2.7 billion a year. China shows their keenness to buy all six Airbus’s plants and to make them more competitive. As president of China Aviation Industry Corporation, Lin Zuo Ming said,
If we succeed in buying or partnering these six facilities, we will develop them and be a more competitive supplier to Airbus
The move would spur further collaboration between AVIC 1 and Airbus which is keen to source more of its components overseas and is building a Chinese assembly plant for the A320 family of single-aisle aircraft. Chinese low-cost manufacturing units are already famous and successful deal will stretch aero components business to Asia. It’s also speculated that growing nation like China and India will eventually develop their own plan to export.
In the other development China Aviation has reached an agreement with Bombardier Inc to jointly develop midsize jetliners, in which China Aviation will invest US$400 million for research, development, equipment and new facilities to build parts for Bombardier’s planned C series aircraft in China. Bombardier will invest US$100 million to help develop AVIC I’s plane, the ARJ21-900.
Bombardier, the world’s third largest commercial aircraft maker, and AVIC I plan to use common parts for the two aircraft to reduce costs. The Bombardier C series would challenge smaller models of planes built by Boeing Co and Airbus. Bombardier had planned for C Series planes to enter service in 2010.
The AVIC 1 interest in Airbus’s plants and its new strategic partnership with Bombardier are further signs that European and North American aerospace groups are scrambling to invest in Chinese, and Russian, commercial plane makers as the global market for civil aviation will expand dramatically in the coming years.
It’s expecting that the global market would grow by almost 27,000 planes worth $2.8 trillion in the next 20 years, with 36 percent of that growth coming only from the Asia-Pacific. Chinese industry will be a major contributor as it will alone require 3,100 new planes in the next 10 years.
Keeping a future in a mind AVIC 1, which is growing at the pace of 40 percent annually, is building a new 90-seater ARJ21 regional jet it expects to enter service in September 2009.
Via: Guardian
