Cooperative Bus
South Korea’s sole aircraft manufacturer, Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. (KAI), is set to pave sky roads with the Airbus Group. The two companies have joined hands in all areas in the aviation industry, such as helicopters and civilian and military aircraft, as well as space satellites. KAI expects that the MOU could lead to 1 trillion won (US$879.51 million) worth of new orders down the line.
The KAI announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Airbus Group at the Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition (ADEX) 2015 on Oct. 20 to step up strategic cooperation between the two companies, with Byun Sang-bong, general manager of the KAI's commercial aircraft business division, and Pierre Jaffre, head of the Asia-Pacific region of Airbus Group, in the presence.
Based on the MOU, the KAI is planning to improve its global competitiveness further by strengthening business and technical cooperation with the Airbus Group, and to have discussions to expand business areas.
In the civilian and military sector, the two companies agreed to cooperate in new business and supply expansion. In the helicopter sector, they will continuously work together to develop the South Korean next-gen light armed helicopters (LAH) and light civil helicopters (LCH), as well as Surion development and marketing cooperation.
In the space industry, both companies will share space business strategy and projects, and work on Korea’s space satellite business.
In addition, they will cooperate in product manufacturing process. The MOU includes a comprehensive partnership in both the aviation and space industries.
The KAI and the Airbus Group have continuously expanded strategic cooperation for over 10 years through airframe structure exports and helicopter development projects. The KAI is one of the international partners involved in the production of the A350 XWB, and recently won a contract to build wing bottom panels for the very popular A320 passenger jets. It is currently supplying airframe structures to all jets manufactured by Airbus. Also, both companies are co-developing Surion, LAH, and LCH, and carrying out joint marketing.
In 2015, the KAI expects airframe structure exports to reach 910 billion won (US$800.35 million), with this number likely to grow to 2 trillion won (US$1.76 billion) by 2020.