Every Sunday, I will carry a brief round of Indian aerospace news. I read lot of Indian aerospace news and share them at friendfeed, but with this weekly post I will summarize and highlight some of them here in this blog.
Bharat Forge's non-auto revenues to grow
Auto-parts' maker Bharat Forge expects 40 per cent of its revenues to come from sectors such as mining, power, oil and gas and aerospace by 2013.
Sahana Sarma, Partner, McKinsey & Company, said the current downturn is a structural break and is the time to ask "'What is the new normal?'."
"Indian innovation is among the fastest growing in the world but with a low level of diversification. India's young population can be a critical asset over the next few decades," Sarma said.
So be prepared AeSI engineer's
IAI Gets $100 Million Contract for HAROP Killer Drones
Officially unveiling the HAROP loitering weapon at the Paris Air Show, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has announced receiving a contract to supply the HAROP Loitering Munition (LM) system to a foreign customer. Foreign sources hint the customer could be India. The contract is estimated to be worth over $100 million.
Tata Elxsi Limited will pursue projects in the automotive and aerospace sectors
Embedded product design and engineering company Tata Elxsi Limited has said that it will aggressively pursue projects in the automotive and aerospace sectors into fiscal 2010. Tata Elxsi’s development centre in Thiruvananthapuram focuses on supporting automotive and aerospace customers for mission-critical embedded software, hardware and systems.Tata Elxsi expanded its Thiruvananthapuram development centre last year to meet scale-up requirements of its clients in these industries.
“We have recently bagged a project in the technology-intensive aerospace and defence domain from a European Tier 1 aerospace supplier. We began our engagement with a pilot activity, which has been expanded into a full-fledged development program,” R Natarajan, VP -Automotive and Aerospace practice, Tata Elxsi said.
So good opportunities for avionics engineer in the next year. Be prepared.
Aerospace investors eye engines for growth
But the main difference between aircraft makers - or "airframers" - and the engine makers lies in their earnings models. Boeing and Airbus tends to earn the most when they sell a plane.
By contrast, engine makers make relatively low margins on engine sales, one Rolls-Royce executive explains.
"The business model of engine makers is very different from other manufacturers," explains Accenture aerospace and defence analyst Damien Lasou. "Their business model is a service model, which is very protective during a downturn."
Put simply; when an aircraft manufacturer buys an engine, it enters into a long-term service agreement with its maker.
Broadly speaking, the original purchase price makes up only about a fifth of the total cost of an engine's 30-year lifetime, according to Mr Lasou.
"Having many engines in service is a guarantee of future revenue," he says.
The same is true for suppliers of any "selectable" aircraft equipment, including anything from radars to tyres, sound systems to aviation electronics, observes Honeywell's Mr Carmassi.
"In the commercial world, it is not uncommon for a product to be given for free to be installed in a Boeing or an Airbus, in the knowledge that it has a 30-year servicing requirement paid for by the airlines," he explains
Read this BBC article the insight. A must read for all AeSI’s Aero-mechanical students!!!
An interesting statistics.
Currently, there are some 55,000 engines in service across the world. GE is looking after some 20,000 of them, hotly followed by Pratt & Whitney, while Rolls-Royce has 14,000 engines in service.
Davies, who was in India for business and official meetings last week, said India and Britain now needed to forge partnerships in new areas, including aerospace and advanced security, to give their business ties a further boost. Davies said he had met with representatives of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) at the Paris air show recently and discussed entering into “partnerships” with India in the areas of aerospace and advanced security, in which Britain had “excellence”.
Yet another sign of India's immergence in aerospace sector or something else?
And to finish all this read this interesting piece from Forbes.com
When I graduated from college with a degree in physics, I moved to Los Angeles to look for work in the aerospace industry. But I got no response to the many résumés I sent out. My time in college began to seem less like an investment and more like a form of consumption--an expenditure of four years and a fair bit of money with no clear economic rationale (though it certainly had other attractions)……..
