A long-term strategy to focus on the manufacture and repair of highly-engineered aero- engine components is helping MB Aerospace benefit from the global aviation market upswing, according to Chief Executive Officer Craig Gallagher.
Revealing that capital expenditure has exceeded $100m since 2016, Mr Gallagher hailed ongoing major investment across the group’s facilities in the United States, Taiwan, Poland and the United Kingdom.
He said: “It is hugely gratifying to see our diversified portfolio strategy paying off, enabling us to support the highest growth segments of the aerospace market, including military applications, single-aisle, freighter and business jet aero-engines”
“Taking a series of right decisions in recent years has given us the necessary flexibility and excellence to deliver for our customers in rebounding markets, post-Covid 19. Longer term, the great news is that we are ideally placed to drive sustained growth and performance benefits for our customers across the next 3-5 years.”
At the start of the pandemic MB Aerospace set three key goals:
- to deepen and fully embed its Global Operating System, focused on operational excellence and supporting the deployment of functional leadership and OEM credentialed expertise in Sales, Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Human Resources, Information Technology and Legal
- to increase specialist repair capabilities around the world, and
- continue the sustained investment in its highest potential businesses, including technology-led, bolt-on acquisitions, capacity and footprint expansions in Poland and
As a result, MB Aerospace is poised to record mid-teens annual sales growth over the next several years, growth which has been supported by 300 New Product Introductions and Repair Development Engineering schemes (NPIs/RDEs) across the last four years and a record 150 NPIs/RDEs for 2022. To support this robust growth, the company is currently hiring an additional 300 employees, building on the 210 new recruits in the last year 18 months.
George Adams, MB Aerospace Chief Operating Officer, added: “Underpinning our growth potential is an engineering-led approach to execution. We currently have >99% Right First Time, record levels of on-time delivery performance and less than 5% voluntary attrition amongst our workforce at a time when we are executing such high levels of NPI and parts transfers across our global Centres of Excellence. Our performance in these fundamental operating metrics is truly world-class and explains why we are entrusted by customers to deliver some of the most demanding challenges amongst our peer group.”
Underpinning this momentum, since the start of 2021 MB Aerospace has secured $250m of contract awards for new parts, new repairs and in support of new programs.
Brian Selfors, MB Aerospace EVP Sales & Commercial, said: “As well as expanding our share of wallet on front-end and installed base programs, we have been successfully adding new OEM customers with major scaled awards for our Poland, East Granby, Taoyuan, Motherwell and Newton Abbot business units.
“It is hugely gratifying when an existing customer expands and renews their contracts, as it speaks to our high levels of demonstrated service and competitiveness. It’s also been particularly pleasing to win work from new OEM customers across the last 24 months, which speaks to our engineering reputation, operating credibility and cultural strengths.”
Craig Gallagher added: “The strong position we find ourselves in is testament to the class- leading culture that is embodied by our purpose statement: we innovate to power, protect and connect the world and to the teamwork of the 1,500 highly skilled colleagues who make up MB Aerospace, combined with our many exceptional customers that have placed trust in us.
“Our entire team has embraced the vision we set out several years ago of creating one of the most innovative, highly-invested and agile businesses in our sector, focussed on operational excellence. We are looking forward to the coming years with tremendous optimism.”