Commercial-aircraft interiors and premium-class seating represent one of two business areas that offer Collins Aerospace particularly strong sales-growth opportunities in Middle Eastern markets, according to Collins CEO Kelly Ortberg.
Ortberg said Middle Eastern operators’ requirements for airliner interiors and premium-class seating are “leading demand” in the region for Collins Aerospace’s range of products. He added that requests from armed forces of Middle Eastern countries for military-aerospace equipment also are giving Collins plenty of business opportunities. State customers in the region are giving Collins “a lot of work round military products—communications, navigation equipment, and ejection seats,” he said.
Collins now has approximately 400 employees based in the Middle East and Northern Africa, and Ortberg expects the company’s workforce in the region to “continue to grow.” Sales to civil-aviation customers represent about 70 percent of Collins Aerospace’s total business in the region, with military-equipment sales representing the other 30 percent. That split is “close to our overall sales mix” for Collins Aerospace worldwide, he said.
The company’s basic strategy for growing its business in the Middle East and Northern Africa is “to locally invest and build our local capabilities,” said Ortberg. At the same time Collins Aerospace is always looking to cement business partnerships in the region to help grow the extent of its business there and become more deeply involved in the market, he said. Two initiatives announced by Collins at the end of October clearly illustrate that strategy.
One is Collins Aerospace’s move to expand the size of its production facility in Casablanca, Morocco—its sole facility in Northern Africa—by 40 percent to allow for production growth there. Established in 2012, the Casablanca facility conducts final assembly and testing for commercial aircraft cockpit and cabin equipment, including sidesticks, throttles, and rudder controls. The site expansion will support the production of rudder controls for the A320neo family and the future assembly of horizontal-stabilizer trim actuators for the Boeing 777X. Expected to be complete by spring 2020, the extension will create about 60 new jobs and it is “critical to the company’s strategy to grow its footprint in the Middle East and Africa,” according to Collins.
Collins’s second new initiative in the region is its participation in Aviation X Lab, an aviation-specific business incubator founded by Emirates in partnership with Dubai Future Foundation in 2017 and formally unveiled at Dubai’s Area 2071 in late October. Aviation X Lab is a long-term partnership involving Emirates, Airbus, Collins Aerospace, GE Aviation and Thales which aims to enhance the air travel experience. Telecoms provider DU is the lab’s digital innovation partner. Aviation X Lab has given itself two initial challenges and has invited start-ups, innovators, academics, NGOs, activists, and corporations globally to apply by January 21, 2020 to have their ideas developed as businesses.
First is to develop a carbon-negative aviation industry. The challenge is based on the premise that airlines produce 115 grams of CO2 per passenger kilometre, resulting in the industry emitting a total of 859 million tonnes of CO2 annually. Aviation X Lab aims to reduce the per-passenger-kilometer emissions figure by 2030 to just 15 grams, an 87 percent decrease.
The second challenge is to rethink the airport design and business model to achieve metrics of 10 passengers annually per square meter of airport infrastructure, while simultaneously offering passengers a 10-minute maximum transition time between airport landside and airside areas.
