A Scottish company plans to start up a business scrapping and recycling aircraft at Glasgow Prestwick airport by the end of this year. Caledonian Aviation intends to create 20-30 new jobs in engineering, sales and administration.
The company says it has already attracted £3.7 million from American investors and plans to work on one aircraft per month initially, stepping up to six per month within three years and creating up to 200 jobs in total.
Company director Struan Johnston says the airport was chosen after a hangar became available when BA decided not to renew a lease. “Prestwick is in a fairly unique position in that it’s the last landfall before you get to the USA, and the European aviation market is not as well served as the USA for aircraft recycling, so that’s where we see the potential at Prestwick.”
The Scottish government is currently negotiating to buy the airport. Put up for sale last March by New Zealand-based owners Infratil, it has been running at an annual loss of £2 million. Ryanair is now the only scheduled passenger airline using Prestwick.
Mr Johnston added: “There’s an awful lot of businesses that surround the airport and make up the aerospace cluster; we’d like to be part of that.”
He added that some used plane parts can be fitted to new aircraft — such as the interior panels of a 737, the wiring and the undercarriage. The aircraft scrapping industry is estimated to be worth £625 million a year — a figure that could treble within five years as older planes are taken out of service.