Airbus signs joint venture deal with China to make components for A350 and A320

Airbus Industrie, based in Toulouse, France, and a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), has signed an agreement with a group of Chinese industrial partners to set up a joint-venture manufacturing centre in Harbin, China, to make carbon-fibre composite parts as well as components for the Airbus A350XWB and Airbus A320 family.

The joint venture involves Chinese partners Harbin Aircraft Industry Group Company Limited, Hafei Aviation Industry Company Limited, Avichina Industry and Technology Company Limited, and Harbin Development Zone Heli Infrastructure Development Company Limited.

Under the agreement, Harbin Aircraft Industry Group Company Limited will hold a 50% stake; Airbus China will hold 20%; and Hafei Aviation Industry, Avichina and Heli will each hold a 10% share.

The manufacturing plant will be operational in September 2009, with a second plant scheduled to open in 2010, a statement from the Chinese industrial partners said. The European aeronautics giant Airbus had, in September 2008, opened a plant in the Chinese port of Tianjin – which was Airbus’ first manufacturing unit outside of Europe.

A spokesman for Airbus Industrie was quoted as saying in Paris that the joint venture, to be 20% owned by Airbus China, was expected to fetch $100 million in annual revenue starting in 2015. The centre, he added, marked “the latest effort by Airbus to forge a long-term strategic manufacturing partnership with China.”

Laurence Barron, the president of Airbus China, said in a statement that the project “demonstrates once again the long-term commitment of Airbus to the sustainable development of China’s aviation industry.”

Airbus’ industrial cooperation with China, Barron added, dates back to 1985 and that, at present, about a half-dozen manufacturers in China were building parts such as wing components and emergency-exit doors.

The new deal agreed upon between Airbus and the Chinese industrial partners was signed by Laurence Barron, president of Airbus China, and Pang Jian, chairman of Harbin Aircraft Industry Group Company Limited and Hafei Aviation Industry Company Limited, in Madrid, Spain, in the presence of China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on January 30, 2009.

Airbus Industrie, which has already agreed to build 5% of the airframe of the forthcoming Airbus A350 wide-body jet in China, will deliver its first Chinese-assembled A320 to Sichuan Airlines in July 2009, the news agency Reuters reported. Earlier in January 2009, Airbus had announced that it would start constructing a factory for the A350 project, valued at 10 billion euros ($13.08 billion), which is expected to be a direct competitor to Boeing Company’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet.