At the end of last month, Spirit AeroSystems opened a new composite manufacturing facility at its site in Prestwick, Scotland (www.spiritaero.com).

This ‘leverages’ technology from Spirit’s R&D portfolio and brings new work to the site in the form of spoilers for the Airbus A320 family.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, officially opened the new facility.

Scott McLarty, Spirit vice-president (Airbus programmes), said: “This is the result of a three-year journey to secure production of the spoiler in the UK. We appreciate the investment support provided by our government and community partners.

“This new facility allows us to use innovative technologies like our Resin Transfer Moulding solution to better meet the needs of our customer.”

RTM supports the high-volume production of spoilers and other ‘monolithic’ components; it is designed to deliver improved quality and significant cost savings.

The investment has allowed Spirit to establish a ‘state of the art’ manufacturing facility that uses the latest automation and robotics.

With these technologies, Spirit expects to produce about 7,000 spoilers annually (for 700 aircraft) — and create
more than 100 new jobs.