David Kaminski-Morrow/London
Airbus is aiming to manufacture half of its A320 rudders at its Chinese joint venture within three years, increasing production seven-fold by 2014.
Hafei Airbus Composite Manufacturing Centre will raise the number of rudder shipsets from three a month to 21 over the period.
Airbus disclosed the agreement in Berlin as the airframer hosted a development and co-operation summit. It said Hafei would ramp up its line "progressively" until it accounted for 50% of global A320 rudder production.
The manufacturing centre, located in Harbin, has been building A320-family components for 18 months, and is set to produce parts for the A350.
Ramp-up of the components follows a separate agreement signed in Berlin, under which Chinese state aviation asset arm China Aviation Supplies Holding Company will acquire 88 baseline A320s. Forty-two of these will be purchased by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's aviation leasing division.
Airbus is to build a "share" of the aircraft, to be delivered over 2012-15, at its Chinese assembly plant at Tianjin, it said. None of the aircraft will be the new A320neo variant.
Source: Flight International
