TPT January 2016

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72 January 2016
Global Marketplace
Airbus and Boeing
A new $600 million plant in the
Gulf Coast city of Mobile gives
Europe’s Airbus a springboard
to expansion in the lucrative
American market
“We expect to get about half that total, if not more.”
The total cited by Allan McArtor to the Seattle Times is 4,800
– the number of single-aisle aircraft that North American
airlines will likely be buying over the next two decades. With
this confident assertion of his own company’s prospects in
that market, the chairman and CEO of the North American
subsidiary of Airbus was taking aim at Boeing Co on its rival’s
own turf.
The hometown newspaper of Boeing’s original headquarters
city termed the plan “an aggressive move” on the part of
the European aerospace company, which commands about
20 per cent of the US market. While that will reach 40 per
cent when carriers including American Airlines take delivery
of Airbus planes on order, the US market has traditionally
favoured Boeing even as the two manufacturers share the
global market 50/50.
Airbus made plain its intentions for the US with a $600 million
plant for single-aisle airplanes, inaugurated recently in Mobile,
Alabama. As noted by the Seattle Times reporters Julie
Johnsson, Andrea Rothman and Matthew Miller, the factory is
only the second such plant built by the plane maker outside
Europe. The other is in China, which is poised to eclipse North
America as the world’s biggest market. (“Airbus Guns for
Boeing with New Alabama Factory,” 15 September)
Airbus president and CEO Fabrice Brégier, who according to
Aviation Week & Space Technology (11 September) has long
advocated for an international footprint for the French-based
group, said that its first US facility had been years in the
making. It is, he said at the opening ceremony in Mobile, “the
most significant, game-changing incident in US aerospace in
decades.”
Most of the jets built in Mobile will be delivered to North
American customers, Airbus said. Deliveries are due to start
early this year, with production rising to four aircraft a month
by 2018. The company holds an option to double the 116-acre
site to accommodate expansion.
› The Seattle Times reported that the first two aircraft
taking shape in the new facility are A321s, the largest
single-aisle model and the one Airbus is counting on to wrest
market share from Boeing. The jets, seating upward of 200
passengers, are becoming a mainstay of transcontinental
routes flown by American, Delta and JetBlue. Asked if
he were planning a new midsize plane to counter the 757
replacement on Boeing’s drawing boards, Mr Brégier nodded
to the A321. “The aircraft exists already,” he said. “You don’t
need to reinvent it.”
› Yet another Airbus executive to strike a strongly proactive
note was co-CEO Tom Enders, who led an unsuccessful
attempt by parent company EADS to beat Boeing for a $35
billion aerial tanker refuelling contract from the US Air Force,
in 2011, and would perhaps relish a re-match.
“We are a large aerospace company,” Mr Enders observed
in a televised interview in Mobile. “And should the situation
arise where we have something competitive to offer the US Air
Force, for instance, this would certainly be a site where we’d
consider doing something.”
Manufacturing
A German programme to bolster
its factory owners is at risk of
eclipse by a similar initiative led
by US tech companies
“There’s great concern that a Google or an Apple might
master the manufacturing world. It’s important that we try to
do it ourselves while we still have the opportunity.”
Heinz-Jürgen Prokop, head of development at Trumpf,
a family-owned maker of metalworking machinery that is
participating in a programme known as Industrie 4.0, was
expressing sentiments being heard more and more in German
industrial circles. These concerns were examined by Alex
Webb of Businessweek in the broader context of Germany’s
plan to jump-start web-linked factories, now facing some
unwelcome competition. (“Can Germany Beat the US to the
Industrial Internet?,” 18 September)
The German government in 2013 launched the Industrie 4.0
alliance of companies, academics and political leaders to
encourage the small enterprises at the heart of the economy
– what Germans call the Mittelstand – to embrace new
technologies. Then, in 2014, AT&T, Cisco Systems, General
Electric, Intel and IBM set up a similar initiative: the Industrial
Internet Consortium, or IIC.
As described by Mr Webb, both groups aim to streamline
communication among the machines in factories throughout
the companies’ supply chains. A typical goal is to reduce
downtime through timely notification of when a factory will
have spare capacity or need replacement parts. According to
global consultant McKinsey, built-in sensors collecting data
for better allocation of resources could help manufacturers
cut energy use by as much as 20 per cent and labour costs
by 25 per cent.
What is at stake, wrote Mr Webb, is no less than “the health
of German manufacturing,” which employs 15 million people
– some one-third of the workforce. By 2020, according
to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Industrie 4.0-related projects
will account for half of capital investment by German
manufacturers, or some $45 billion. Another US consultancy,
Wikibon, estimates that global investment in the industrial
Internet will have topped $500 billion a year by 2020, up from
$20 billion in 2012.