In a Q&A session, Aerospace Wales Forum’s director, Rachael Blackburn sings the praises of Wales’s rich tapestry of aerospace and defence companies based in the region.

The Aerospace Wales Forum, its members and a dedicated Government aerospace team all work to ensure that the region maintains its competitive position and remains an attractive prospect for global aerospace.

Q) Firstly, is it still important to have a regional aerospace cluster?

Regional aerospace clusters continue to offer the most comprehensive support to our members by showcasing their capabilities on a national and international stage. We promote opportunities for our members to bid for supply chain contracts and to meet with key industry figures, we facilitate networking within the sector and are the interface between industry, government and academia. Perhaps, most importantly it is the knowledge we hold and the industry contacts that we have, we are always eager to make connections and get people talking!

Q) How do you stay relevant?

Aerospace Wales has a diverse Board and our Aerospace Wales Ambassadors come from every sub-sector of the aerospace, defence and space industries and from Primes to SMEs. We meet monthly to ensure we are kept abreast of sector updates and industry trends. We also meet monthly with the other four regional aerospace alliances of FAC, MAA, NWAA and WEAF, to share best practice and to discuss matters that affect the nation as a whole. Within these sessions we incorporate quarterly meetings with ADS, DBT and ATI. All the regions are supporting the delivery of national important programmes for our members, with ADS delivering SCS and DTEP and the ATI SME programme. By working together, we offer cross border opportunities and help to facilitate cross cluster collaboration – we know that working together will strengthen the industry as a whole and ensure that we can work effectively to deal with issues affecting the industry.

Q) What are the current key concerns with your members?

From our ongoing conversation with members, we are acutely aware of two issues which are stagnating growth within the industry, skills and export/trade barriers. These are two themes which we will focus on and provide as much support and on as possible.

We have formed the Aerospace and Aviation Skills provision group which includes a cross section of Welsh Government colleagues. The focus of the group is to ensure that we have a joined-up approach to promoting the work that our universities, colleges, RTOs and private training providers already do. This will help not only with existing member companies, but also with any inward investment projects whereby a provision of workers and future pipeline of talent is vital to the success of the business.  Through this engagement we will ensure knowledge from industry about future requirements is properly communicated, helping to secure future talent in the areas that industry needs.

Barriers to trade are still an issue which many of our companies are experiencing. We already engage heavily with the Welsh Government Trade Policy Team, but we need to ensure that our members are too. We are looking to set up events over the year to ensure that Welsh businesses know what help in relation to export is available but also ensure that communication between industry and the Trade Policy teams both in Wales and the UK Government are kept up to date, to increase export growth for our membership.

Q) How many member companies are engaged with your cluster?

We now have in excess of 200 member companies that are active in the aerospace, defence and space sectors. These range from the primes and large companies such as Airbus, BAE Systems, Electroimpact, GE, Magellan, Safran, Raytheon, Thales and Triumph to SMEs and innovative new companies that are having a big impact such as metrology engineering services and in the space sector exciting developments with the likes of Space Forge, B2Space and Smallspark. The space sector is growing in Wales and consequently we have now established a sister company, Space Wales, and are delighted to have appointed Dr Rosie Cane as operations manager. Our activities have been supported by the UK Space Agency and Welsh Government and through our endeavours have seen growth in employee numbers and infrastructure in Wales, such as 2 Space Enterprise Labs being established and now, we are working with Space Forge on having the first Micro Gravity Centre in Europe in Wales.

Q) Are you working with any specific groups?

In 2020 we set up the Aerospace Wales MRO Hub, a collection of 11 companies that recognise that they are stronger by sharing industry news and opportunities. Aerospace Wales facilitate monthly meetings with the MRO Hub, which has already had success in securing contracts, one example of this is a £0.5m contract won by two companies in Spain. We know that our companies collaborating together works, we now need to exploit that as much as possible and lean on our network of contacts to learn best practice.

Wales has long been known for its aerospace and defence capability and is a major centre for MRO; 10% of the UK’s activity is managed here. With so much activity and opportunity, Wales’ MRO sector continues to grow in volume, as well as workforce expertise. As part of the growth activity and in order to highlight the breath of capabilities that Wales has Wales MRO Hub was established.

Wales MRO Hub offers a unique through-life service for commercial, defence and business aviation. The through-life service MRO model provides a combination of services to keep an aircraft available, airworthy and economically viable throughout the whole lifecycle. The MRO Hub spans the aviation industry value chain, encompassing everything from aircraft leasing, maintenance and recycling to component manufacture, parts repair and business aviation.

Q) Finally, what are your priorities?

Raising the profile of companies is vitally important to ensure Wales is front and centre when people think about the industry. We know that we are the gatekeeper of vast amounts of information regarding the capabilities that Wales has, and we want to ensure that Wales is seen as a centre of excellence for the sector globally. We also want as many of our companies to collaborate as possible and to help to nurture and encourage the next generation of companies here in Wales. Therefore, we have a calendar of upcoming events to showcase our member’s capabilities, products and services on a global stage. This year we have exhibited with our member companies at MRO Americas, we have a large Team Wales presence in the UK Pavilion at the Farnborough Airshow, and we have MRO Europe later in the autumn. 

Every other year we hold the Aerospace Wales Showcase Expo and last December we had over 100 exhibitors, 500 delegates and facilitated 800 Meet the Buyer appointments with the Primes. This is a superb event for the aerospace companies to network and demonstrate their expertise to the industry’s key players.

This year we will be hosting our first Aerospace Wales Networking Dinner and Awards ceremony. We recognise that where we excel is helping companies to foster relationships and make new connections, so we will continue to bring these opportunities to our members.

Aerospace Wales will be exhibiting at the Farnborough Airshow located in hall 1, stand 221.

www.aerospacewalesforum.com