MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Airbus’s planned aircraft assembly plant in Alabama will cost $600 million to build and will employ 1,000 people when it reaches full production, officials said ahead of a formal announcement Monday.
The European company’s first aircraft assembly plant in America will produce A320 single-aisle passenger planes that will compete with Boeing.
New Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier arrived in Mobile late Sunday and will unveil details Monday, according to two officials with knowledge of the France-based company’s plans.
Two state officials said the plant in Alabama’s port city of Mobile should create about 2,500 construction jobs, and it will turn out about four planes a month in 2017. All four officials spoke to The Associated Press condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the plant ahead of Monday’s announcement.
The plant will be located at Brookley Aeroplex, which was an Air Force base until its closure in 1969.
News of the plant broke last week, and details about it have gradually emerged in media reports.
The dean of the business school at the University of South Alabama, Carl Moore, said attracting a company like Airbus could have a transforming effect on Alabama like Mercedes-Benz had when it picked Alabama for its first American assembly plant in 1993.
“It’s a prestige name that’s internationally known,” Dean Carl C. Moore of the University of South Alabama said.
Mercedes’ plant was so successful that it was soon followed by Honda and Hyundai assembly plants and a Toyota engine plant that reshaped the manufacturing economy in a state still reeling from the loss of textile and apparel jobs.
The Airbus announcement comes as Alabama struggles to recover from the recession. Unemployment has dropped from 10.0 percent in July 2011 to 7.4 percent in May, but part of that drop came from people leaving the work force rather than finding jobs.
Moore said one job at an aircraft assembly plant can create up to three jobs at suppliers. “It will be a tremendous economic impact for Mobile, the surrounding area and the state,” Moore said.
The project marks the second time that Airbus’ parent company, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., has been attracted to Mobile. EADS planned to build a $600 million, 1,400-employee assembly line at Brookley for Air Force refueling tankers if it won a federal contract, but the company lost the five-year competition to Boeing in 2011.
Boeing is a longtime employer in Alabama with defense and rocket operations that employ 2,700 in north Alabama. It used the upcoming announcement to criticize what it sees as European government subsidies that help Airbus compete. “While it is interesting once again to see Airbus promising to move jobs from Europe to the United States, no matter how many are created, the numbers pale in comparison to the thousands of U.S. jobs destroyed by illegal subsidies,” the company said in a statement.
Airbus also criticizes Boeing’s subsidies, and the two companies have had a long-running international trade dispute.
The Mobile operation will join Airbus assembly plants in in Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Tianjin, China.
“It’s going to have a very positive impact on Mobile and hopefully it will lead to an interest in Mobile for more aerospace jobs,” said former Gov. Don Siegelman, a Mobile native who recruited some of Alabama’s auto plants and suppliers.
Airbus’ 150-seat A320 is generally used on short- and medium-haul flights, and Airbus makes more of them than any of its other planes. Boeing is also ramping up production of its 737, which competes directly with the A320. Both companies are putting new, more fuel-efficient engines on the planes, hoping to extend their appeal as airlines try to cut their fuel bills. Airbus made its new-engine decision earlier than Boeing and got a big jump on orders.
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Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
One would hope that the folk’s at DECD are reading this, especially if the Bombardier Project is still in the work’s. This type manufacturing, and the ripple effect’s in construction (and renovation’s), trucking AND rail, since a huge number of part’s are shipped in by rail (any one wanna guess how many rivet’s it takes to build an airliner ?), are huge factors to be considered by BOTH side’s when Brunswick is looked at. MMA whined and cried about not having enough volume to make the rail’s pay off in terms of traffic, regular scheduling and volume shipment’s. Well here are the arguement’s answer’s and no one can argue with EADS number’s. They have no reason to lie, more so since to lie would only hurt them. The same for ‘Bomby’. This EADS project is almost a step by step blueprint for ‘Bomby’ & DECD to use to make Brunswick work. And if the MMA and the Eastern Maine folk’s can work it out, it can also bring back a good portion of their rail traffic and reduce their dependence on just Irving’s leased time and car’s. How many part’s does ‘Bomby’ move by commercial cargo ship ? MMA and Eastport would seem to be a good match. Same for Searsport. Rail needs volume. ‘Bomby’ may be a source of that volume. Combine the rail volume of Millinocket’s bio-coal plant to what ever volume that ‘Bomby’ brings in and Eastern & Northern Maine rail might just start coming back. Now that’s an idea worth fighting, and negotiating, for !
MMA doesn’t serve Brunswick.
Doesn’t have to but the point has been seen and made. Aircraft manufacturer’s use rail for the shipment of part’s, engine’s and component’s of all type’s. Rail, in any use here in Maine, is a good thing. And if ‘Bomby’ wants to expand to another airport facility, like up in Houlton, well rail’s already here. Same for rail use up here. The County is wide open for this type of development.
Of course another selling point for Alabama is that it is a right to work state. That’s a little detail that needs to be attended to in Maine.
Right to work might be nice in the short term but over the long haul it’s a mess that lead’s to the old days of ‘Company Town’s’, depressed wage’s, school’s turning out kid’s who think that their only hope is to go work in the mine’s, mill’s or worse, and a State that’s one very short step from being turned into a labor market-slave State. Is everyone here so determined to see Maine retreat back into the past of the 1910’s thru 30’s that they are wanting to sacrifice their children’s future’s ? Go look at the coal town’s of Eastern Kentucky, Tenessesse and West Virginia and see where that kind of thinking led. You really want ‘Company Town’s’ running Maine ? Fine, do so and in less than a year you’re going to see at least 3 hospital’s in Maine close since these same Company’s are ‘suddenly learning’ the hospital’s aren’t going to knuckle under to Company order’s to keep from reporting Workman’s Comp injuries and keep from paying WC-related injury bill’s. These same State’s also become home to unchecked political power identical to what Montana was back in the 1880’s thru 1930’s. It took Montana a very long time to see just where Right to Work wound up. Why can’t Maine learn from them ? Or are we doomed to be the ‘Leaky Bucket’ State, constantly having to re-learn, and suffer thru, what we know doesn’t work.
Alabama’s Right to Work status is nothing less than Big Business coming in and using ‘My way or the highway’ tactic’s and outside money in getting tax concession’s from State and Local Gov’t’s in order to set up shop and take advantage of the local labor market’s. Why do you think so many ‘successful Company’s’ are suddenly coming to the US and setting up Shop’s in these RTW State’s like Alabama, that have a history of being labor-abusive in safety and health, instead of those State’s that have both available organized labor and better infra-structure for their needs ? Bombardier is looking at Maine because of both our resource’s (BNAS facillities, the road and rail system’s, the labor market, etc.) but also because Maine has proven that it it willing to work with ANY business that wants to open or expand shop here on the basis of transparency to all. You can be sure that ‘Bomby” looked, and is looking, very long and very hard at the labor market and what it’s going totake on when, and if, they come to Maine. Me, personally, I’d love for them to come to Maine and set up shop ’cause everyone win’s. When everyone knows what’s going on and where the Business is going (and what it’s going to take to get it there) Maine has never shyed away from discussing and negotiating the possibilitiy’s. Cianbro, to their credit, saw this when they opened their yard for the building of the modular plant’s 3 years ago. And they did it in a Union State no less. So the RTW arguement is useless. Union’s can see that they have to adapt. The UAW is doing it in Detroit and other place’s. It’s time to get past the excuse’s and get moving.
Your concerns are apocalyptic. Alabama hardly qualifies as a “Company Town (state?) with the diverse manufacturing base and economic expansion it is currently enjoying:
“In 2011, 70 domestic manufacturers announced plans to set up a factory in
Alabama. They’re expected to create 4,879 jobs and $1.6 billion in capital
investment over the next two to three years. In the same year, an additional 313
manufacturers, already in the state, announced expansion plans that would create
another 12,369 new jobs and pour $2.5 billion in capital investment.” (CNN Money)
Your comment regarding hospital closures hardly deserves a response. First, it assumes that worker’s comp injuries constitute a significant a revenue base that makes the difference between surviving or closing down for hospitals. Secondly it assumes that major manufacturers such as Airbus, Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, etc., etc., would engage in or countenance unsafe working conditions and fraudelant reporting practices with respect to workplace injuries.
Finally, other than the public sector, unions represent a miniscule segment of the work force. The only impact Right to Work laws would have in Maine is on public unions. Other than that it would be a mere footnote in labor history in Maine.
Time and the voter’s wil tell.