Airbus seeks China goodwill with first wide-body site abroad

Bloomberg

Airbus SE is courting China with its first wide-body jet facility outside Europe, positioning the company to chase billions of dollars in potential orders from an aviation market that’s set to become the world’s biggest within a decade.
Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier inaugurated the $200 million completion centre in Tianjin, a site designed to give finishing touches such as painting and cabin installation to A330 aircraft. The city, near Beijing, is already home to an assembly plant that produces single-aisle A319s and A320s.
“There’s a direct connection between your investment, your capabilities to demonstrate that you care about the Chinese industry and at the same time your market access,” Bregier told . To prove his point, he said the planemaker’s market share has risen to almost 50 percent from 20 percent since their investment in the narrow-body assembly plant.
In a race to earn Chinese goodwill, Airbus and Boeing Co. are moving parts of their manufacturing and supply chains to a country the US company estimates will need $1.1 trillion of aircraft over two decades and where the government still makes key purchasing decisions. For China, which has its own aviation ambitions, the A330 centre is a coup of sorts in its chase to build its own commercial planes.
The Toulouse, France-based maker may even look at adding A350s to its China plan in the future, Bregier said. As traffic surges, the country needs more wide-body aircraft, he said, pitching for the A380 that hasn’t found much demand beyond the five flying in China.
In China, where policy makers want companies to manufacture locally under a “Made in China 2025” blueprint, the two aerospace giants are also moving delivery closer to customers in Asia to help ease the strain on the planemakers’ existing facilities. The first A330 off the new line will go to Tianjin Airlines. The facility aims to roll out two planes a month in a year.
China has placed billions of dollars in orders with the companies. In July, Airbus won contracts worth $22 billion to supply state-owned China Aviation Supplies Holding Co. with 100 of the A320-series jets and 40 of its latest twin-aisle A350s.