Apulia and Campania are each home to two of Italy's most important and innovative medium-size aerospace suppliers. Brindisi-based composites specialist Salver and Magnaghi Aeronautica - a manufacturer of landing gear and hydraulic components in Naples - are the main enterprises of a €67.5 million ($94.5 million) turnover aerospace business owned by Italian investment firm Invesco.
Invesco branched seriously into aerospace at the turn of the century, acquiring Salver and Magnaghi in 1999 and 2001 to join Metal Sud, a small company in Caserta near Naples involved in surface treatments that it had bought a decade earlier. Salver and Magnaghi each employ just over 250 people and have a long heritage in the industry: Salver's composites business goes back to the 1960s, although it was the 1980s before it focused on aerospace; Magnaghi began life in the 1930s producing landing gear and other aircraft parts for Mussolini's air force.
For Salver, based in an industrial zone on the edge of the busy Adriatic port of Brindisi - and a long-term supplier to Alenia and other Finmeccanica companies - the increasing use of advanced composite materials in aircraft programmes is attracting new customers from around the world. The most significant is Bombardier, with whom Salver won a risk-sharing contract last year to design and produce the moveable wing surface on the Bombardier CSeries.
Commercial manager Giovanni Viggiani describes the company's biggest deal to date as the harvest of a sustained effort to push Salver up the value chain by offering engineering and design services - "We changed from build-to-print to build-to-spec" - and broadening its market outside Italy. "Under Invesco we adopted a new strategic plan to grow the company and compete in the global market, and diversify our customer base from Alenia," he says.
Today Alenia makes up about a third of Salver's revenues - including structural parts for ATR regional aircraft, radomes on the Boeing 777 and the 787's ducting system. Piaggio is another important customer; Salver manufactures all moveable surfaces, the vertical fin and the radome on the P180 Avanti II twin-pusher for the Genoa-based airframer. Goodrich and Eurocopter in Germany are other important clients.
GROWTH PLANS
As with all aerospace manufacturers, Salver's growth plans have been stunted by the downturn. Turnover this year will be roughly flat, compared with last year's €25 million. However, Viggiani says investment "is still moving on our strategic route" - a new non-destructive testing facility has been installed, for instance. The CSeries effect should kick in from 2011 onwards as the programme moves from engineering to manufacturing. "We have good expectations of steady growth as production starts," says Viggiani.
Over in Naples, where the charmingly chaotic city has grown around its 28,000m2 (300,000ft2) pre-war factory, Magnaghi is also looking to the future. The €37.6 million-turnover business is close to securing a deal on a new site and is increasingly performing the role of risk-sharing system integrator, rather than manufacturing to order. Access to engineers is a huge advantage. "Naples has one of the best and longest-established universities in Italy in aero engineering," says chief operating officer Giorgio Iannotti. "We employ 57 engineers and we also outsource to about five to 10 local engineering companies. We have no problems to find engineers."
Spending in research and development is also key to counter the threat from low-cost economies, says Iannotti. In 2011, almost half Magnaghi's €4.6 million investment budget is earmarked for new product development. "We are investing in innovation where our competitors [in developing countries] are not able to compete. That is how we can compete with countries which have lower costs," he says.
R&D programmes that have borne fruit include a prototype electrical actuation landing gear system for the Alenia Sky-X unmanned air combat vehicle demonstrator, experiments on crash absorbers using composite materials, and the development of high velocity oxygenated fuel thermal spray coatings as an alternative for chrome plating.
Like its sister company, Magnaghi wants to reduce its dependence on Finmeccanica companies and products. The Italian industrial giant and its associated brands certainly dominate its client base: Magnaghi is a tier one supplier of the main and nose landing gear on the Alenia C-27J, the NH Industries NH90's deck lock system and the undercarriage of the Turkish version of the AW129 helicopter. It also subcontracts for tier one suppliers on the likes of the Sukhoi Superjet 100, the ATR 42/72 and the Alenia Aermacchi M346 jet trainer. Like many European and North American aerospace manufacturers, it is looking at Brazil as a fast-growing marketplace and industrial partner, and last year opened a design office in Sao Paolo.
Source: Flight International
