Boeing has started a project to expand its South Carolina 787 production site for the purpose of increasing output.
The company’s expansion plan includes building a “new final assembly building” in North Charleston to accommodate 787 “production positions, production support and office space”, Boeing said on 7 November when marking the project’s groundbreaking.
With an area of roughly 92,903sq m (1.2 million sq ft), the new site will be similarly sized to Boing’s current single 787 production facility in North Charleston.
Boeing additionally will open a new “parts preparation area facility, a vertical fin paint facility [and] flight line stalls”, and add to a site used for manufacturing 787 interior components.
“The new expansion will allow the site to support higher 787 production rates given strong market demand,’ Boeing says.
The company now produces seven 787s monthly, all in North Charleston, and aims to hike output to eight monthly before year-end and to 10 monthly in 2026.
It envisions eventually increasing production to a rate in the “teens”, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg said late last month.
The 787 has recently proved a particularly strong seller, with Boeing having landed orders for 61 of the jets in 2025 through September.
The company expects to invest more than $1 billion on the expansion project and says the effort will create more than 1,000 jobs over five years.
Boeing established an operation in South Carolina in 2009 and now employs some 8,200 workers at facilities in the state.
It initially produced 787s only at its unionised facility in Everett, Washington, delivering the first of the widebody type in September 2011.
Then in 2010 the company started producing the jets also in North Charleston, where workers are mostly not represented by unions.
In 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Boeing sharply reduced 787 output and announced its intention to stop producing the jets in Everett and only assembly them in North Charleston.
Boeing said the shift would save money during a period of weak demand.
