Airbus to look at buying Bombardier Belfast plant

Airbus is considering buying Bombardier’s Belfast wing production operation, after the Canadian firm said it was looking to offload the struggling plant.

Guillaume Faury, who started as Airbus chief executive in April, said taking over the Belfast plant was an option, although he stressed there were “many alternatives” to a bid and that the assessment was at a very early stage.

“We’ll be looking at it,” Faury said during a visit to London. “We will make sure that whatever happens preserves our interest.”

Airbus is the major customer of the Belfast operation, which makes wings for the aerospace group’s A220. The Toulouse-based company acquired a majority stake in the A220, previously known as the C series, in 2017. The plant also manufactures engine covers for Airbus’s A320neo plane.

Bombardier’s decision to sell the plant, announced earlier this month, has created uncertainty for its 3,600 workers in Belfast, who have already gone through several rounds of redundancies since 2015, when it had about 5,000 workers. The Belfast operation, which still trades under the historic Short Brothers name, lost $20m (£15.6m) in 2017, the latest year for which it has filed accounts.

Faury said Airbus would also be open to the plant continuing to be run by a third-party supplier.

He said: “We think wings are very close to our own business. The production could be coming from suppliers if they are reliable and have a long-term perspective. These are the options we will be looking at.”

A purchase of the Belfast operation would add to Airbus’s considerable operations in the UK, which include wing manufacture for most of its commercial aircraft products at Broughton, North Wales, as well as production and design of wings at Filton, near Bristol.

While Airbus executives regularly praise the UK operations, which employ 14,000 people, Faury’s predecessor, Tom Enders, has previously warned that other countries have lobbied for Airbus to move wing production out of the UK because of Brexit.

In January, Enders described the UK government’s handling of Brexit as a “disgrace” and said that future investments would go elsewhere if significant trade frictions were imposed after Britain leaves the EU.

However, Faury struck a more congenial tone on Thursday, describing the British operations as “very competitive”, although he added that the delay to the date of Brexit made the situation worse for the company by prolonging uncertainty. Airbus previously said it would stockpile parts worth €1bn (£870m) to prepare for possible disruption to parts crossing the border.