Staff Report
Published Nov. 22, 2011
GKN Aerostructures North America will open a new aerospace components assembly facility in the 150,000-square-foot Miller Valentine speculative building, located at 348 Millennium Drive, Orangeburg.
 GKN Aerostructures North America announced today it will open a new aerospace components assembly facility in Orangeburg. (Photo/Provided) |
The U.K.-based company’s plans were announced today after Orangeburg County Council approved a set of incentives for the new aerospace manufacturer Monday night.
Initially, the facility will perform assembly operations for a composite fuselage for Honda’s new HondaJet, a light business aircraft. GKN was awarded the HondaJet contract on Nov. 14.
Development work on the fuselage currently is being done at GKN’s facility in Tallassee, Ala.
Company officials said workers will begin equipping the Orangeburg plant shortly, with completion scheduled for the second half of 2012. The company will begin recruiting staff in the spring of 2012, and about 75 people are expected to be working in the facility within the first year of production.
Employment is expected to climb to 250-300 workers by the end of 2017. GKN aims to recruit the plant’s staff from the local region.
“This facility is at the heart of the growth of our business in the U.S.,” said Kevin Cummings, president and CEO of Aerostructures North America. “The contract on the pioneering HondaJet represents a win, and a customer relationship we are particularly proud of, and this move brings the vital assembly activity close to Honda’s own plant.”
HondaJet’s headquarters are in Greensboro, N.C.
“Over the longer term we expect the new site to serve a range of aerospace customers on assembly tasks across civil and military aviation,” Cummings added.
One of those customers is Boeing Co., which last summer opened a final assembly facility for the wide-body Dreamliner 787 passenger plant in North Charleston, about 70 miles from GKN’s new Orangeburg site near the intersection of Interstate 26 and U.S. Route 301.
GKN Aerospace is responsible for a number of components on the 787, including the plane’s acoustic exhaust and lightweight thrust links, according to an earlier press release on the company’s website.
Officials did not comment on the possibility of the Orangeburg plant becoming a supplier for Boeing’s S.C. operations.
GKN Aerospace describes itself on its website as a “first-tier supplier to the global aviation industry, working on every major fixed and rotary-wing aerospace platform.”
The Redditch, England-based company is a manufacturer of composite and metallic technologies in both military and civil markets. GKN has 10,000 employees in 31 locations worldwide.
"Today's significant economic development announcement by GKN Aerospace is the beginning of what we hope to be a new era in advanced manufacturing here in the central S.C. region. South Carolina is the ideal address for aerospace business. Our recent participation at the Paris Air Show is testament toward our commitment in recruiting suppliers to our region. More and more companies are telling us that we have a highly skilled and capable workforce along with a transportation network that is unprecedented in the Carolinas," said Central SC Alliance Chairman Jim Apple.
Yes