Source : The Business Times, February 22, 2008
SINGAPORE AIRSHOW 2008
INVESTMENTS are gathering pace at Seletar Aerospace Park, with ST Aerospace boosting its plane conversion capacity by opening another hangar yesterday, and Pratt & Whitney (P&W) breaking ground on an aerospace campus.
ST Aero's latest $17.3 million two-bay hangar gives it eight wide-body and 13 narrow-body bays in Singapore.
Besides capacity expansion, the group has also boosted its capability with the introduction of passenger-to-freighter conversions in Singapore. These were previously done at its Mobile, Alabama facility in the US.
'ST Aerospace's investment in Hangar 700 is testament to Singapore's strong engineering capabilities,' Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said at the opening yesterday.
With conversion of a Boeing 757 costing about US$5.5 million, this is a significant and growing segment for the sector, he noted.
P&W, meanwhile, broke ground on a US$30 million facility that will form the centrepiece of its Global Service Partners maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business in Singapore.
The first phase of the multi-building campus is expected to be completed by the third quarter of next year, with the rest coming on line over two-and-a-half years.
P&W has recently broadened the services it offers in Singapore to include high-value areas such as engineering research and development (R&D). Staff from P&W's Asian aerospace engineering business, Global Services Engineering-Asia, will be housed in the new facility.
The facility will become P&W's hub for engineering and technical work, senior vice-president and general manager Jim Keenan said. This will generate US$20-30 million of extra annual revenue from 2010 when the first phase becomes operational, rising to an extra US$50 million a year as the other phases kick in.
The 30 engineering specialists at its present Loyang facility will move to Seletar, where numbers will rise to 60-90.
'The development of an aerospace hub strategically located here will allow for the efficiency and logistics improvements necessary to meet the needs of P&W Global Service Partners' growing customer base in Asia,' Mr Keenan said.
Seletar Aerospace Park is a 300 ha development cluster for aerospace MRO, design and manufacturing, training and business/ general aviation. It offers synergy and economies of scale to major aerospace companies, with ST Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and P&W the first anchor tenants.
There are also plans to make Seletar Airport the region's premier business aviation hub.
The government has announced plans to extend the runway and introduce instrument landing systems to allow all-weather access.
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