CAV Aerospace

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :28/09/2007 11:05:01

Something in the air

‘Creating added value’ is the motto of CAV Aerospace. Managing Director Owen McFarlane gives an idea of how the company goes about it

Written by Ruari McCallion & Produced by Ben Weaver

The higher you go, the colder it gets, which makes ice a problem for aeroplanes. If it forms on the wings, it adds weight – of course – and disrupts airflow; it can, in the extreme situation, actually bring the aeroplane down. Large airliners don’t suffer to the same extent as they can fly above 25,000-30,000 feet, where the air is a lot thinner and moisture isn’t so much of a problem. And even if something does form on the wings, bigger planes are large enough to deploy rubber ‘boots’, which shift everything when they’re inflated.

But that option isn’t available for smaller aircraft and, as that is one of the fastest-growing segments in the entire aerospace market, there’s a big opportunity for an effective de-icing system that can keep corporate and leisure aeroplanes in the air. One of the companies that make up what is now CAV Aerospace has had just the thing, for a long time.

“Historically, the original business was TKS, which was the brand name our ice protection system was sold under for many years,” says Owen McFarlane, managing director of CAV. TKS stands for Tlcamit, Kilfrost and Sheepbridge Stokes, which were brought together when the MoD came together to produce ice protection for RAF bomber aircraft during WWII. The system delivers glycol to the leading edge of the wing surface, in a pressurized bleed through holes the size of a human hair. Its lightness makes it the only effective solution for the smaller aircraft market.

Fluid flow

“A fluid ice protection system is more appropriate for smaller aircraft. It only needs to be on for relatively short periods of time and it only has to deal with the area where ice forms, which is the wing’s leading edge,” McFarlane says. “The flow necessary to keep the wings clear is very low – about 3.2 millilitres a minute – and it doesn’t need to be on for long – say, an hour an a half to three hours, so the glycol tank can be relatively small, and power needs are low, too.” CAV sells a lot to manufacturers and owners of Cessna, Beechcraft and similar aeroplanes. Small corporate jets use the CAV system, as well; they rely on very efficient wing surfaces.

Large areas of rubber, which ‘boots’ use, compromise efficiency. The fluid-based CAV system doesn’t have one risk associated with boots: inflating too early will cause soft ice to simply expand and form a hollow. But as the idea has been around so long, why hasn’t it been copied?

“Our technology still has some patent protection, and the cost of entry is high,” McFarlane explains. “The intellectual property aspect covers the basic patent and, secondly, certification in every jurisdiction, which isn’t cheap. Any competitor would have to ensure that their system provided proper ice protection and did so effectively. The third aspect is our market. Small and propeller-driven aircraft has been seen as a non-growth sector, although it has been growing recently. We’ve found a niche and our approach seems to work.”

It seems to work very well, though not without the odd hiccough along the way. After a period of rapid expansion, the predecessor company, Aerospace Systems and Technologies (AS&T), went into receivership in 2000. It was bought out of receivership in 2001 and merged with Prematec Corporation and Castillion Aerospace to form CAV. Production is still centred at its 155,000 sq ft factory at Consett, Co Durham, but it also has a design centre in Manchester; Production facilities at Leicester and Llantrisant; and a very important presence in the US market, at Salina, Kansas, which focuses on ice protection.

Turnover in 2006 is expected to be £50 million, well ahead of 2004’s £20 million. Ownership of the world’s leading ice protection system for smaller, military and general aviation aircraft gives one a head start in the market but it isn’t going to produce that sort of growth, not on its own.

Ribs and stringers

“We’ve been building stringers – the structural elements that run from front to rear on the wings – since 1999,” McFarlane says. “We also make large ribs and spars, predominantly for Airbus but also for the Boeing 777 Dreamliner. We have two 18-metre long bed machining centres and that gives us a focused position in the marketplace.” CAV can machine, bend, twist and paint; most manufacturers can only do part. With the capacity to design, project manage and deliver the finished item the company is pretty much unique across the whole of Europe. The business is growing and it’s investing around £18 million in its future, split equally between plant and working capital. Part of that future is a new production facility in Poland.

“Poland represents the third leg of our strategy. We’ve established an assembly plant in Rzeszow, which produces minor structural components, like elevators, flaps and the things that hang on the wing. It increases our capability for sheet metal fabrication,” he says. So is the company likely to move to the East? “Traditionally, we’d done that sort of work at Consett but it’s no longer a competitive option. We tried the subcontracting route but, while they were definitely competitive on cost, we found that the supply chain companies in Poland aren’t mature enough for our needs.”

Sheet metal and straightforward riveted assemblies are labour intensive and high cost, in the UK. They’re relatively cheap to transport, so it made sense to establish production in a low-cost area. “We’ve invested in physical infrastructure and training there. But we’ve also increased employment in Britain, through focusing on things we can do better here. We’ve invested in machine tools for the long beds; the cost of transporting complex and large, heavy parts is pretty high, and delivery to North America or the UK is about the same from anywhere and the skills input is high, so it makes sense to produce here. We’ve also invested in roboticisation of the de-icing production line.”

The aircraft industry is a bit strange, in that companies who normally compete with each other can also find themselves collaborating on particular projects.

“Airbus and Boeing produce about 800-900 aircraft a year between them, so working together is important – it’s counter-productive to invest in too much capacity. We compete on different packages of work, seek out where we’re competitive, and where we aren’t, and collaborate in those areas.

To an extent, we rely on our customers to give us direction,” McFarlane says. The mix of collaboration, competition, niche focus and offshoring selected work to low-cost Poland will continue for the foreseeable future – after all, it’s been successful up till now so why change? “We’ve been growing at 25 per cent a year for the last three years and it’s our investors’ aspiration that we should continue to deliver double-digit growth in the future.”

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CAV Aerospace