Safran Helicopter Engines believes it will need to deliver 10,000 new engines over the next decade to meet the demand from a booming helicopter market — but admits ongoing supply chain problems are making the needed ramp-up challenging.
“We have not experienced such a positive dynamic in the last 10 years,” Safran Helicopter Engines CEO Cedric Goubet told journalists during a pre-HAI Heli-Expo briefing. “We are back from a market standpoint and demand standpoint to pre-pandemic activity levels.”
Today, the company has about 21,700 of its engines flying in aircraft around the globe. It believes that figure will grow to about 25,000 by 2033, with that growth in the fleet combining with engine retirement to result in the estimated requirement for 10,000 new engines.
The company delivered about 620 new engines in 2023 – short of its target of over 700 — and Goubet said it hopes to ramp up to the required production level of 1,000 new engines per year by 2025. This is compared to what Goubet called a “record low” of 500 engines delivered in 2022.
The company also believes it needs to ramp up its repair capabilities to cope with an estimated 1,500 engines per year by 2025 — a leap of close to 50 percent over its current rate.
This is requiring a substantial investment to modernize and increase its capabilities, through recruitment, training and the creation of new repair and maintenance centers.
About 1,000 staff joined the company last year, and most of these are working on the production shop floor. A similar growth in staff numbers is expected this year.
“We have never invested like this,” said Goubet. “Our investment efforts have increased by 25/30 percent, for example, last year compared to the year before — and we will replicate this significant investment effort this year.”
The new facilities include those being built in Germany and India, while the footprint of Safran’s existing maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) base in Brazil is to be doubled and the site modernized.
“What we continue to experience, unfortunately, is supply chain constraints,” said Goubet. “We are still suffering from this lasting supply shock because of capacity shortage, and our ability today to keep up with the demand is hampered by missing parts [and] late parts.”
To counter this, Safran has launched various recovery plans with suppliers. Some of its new staff have been working directly on these supply chain issues, he added.
This support can take various forms, said Goubet, and is decided on a case-by-case basis. It can be directly through Safran’s own resources and expertise, through help in recruitment, or providing longer term commitments in terms of purchase orders.
“What is unprecedented today is the number of suppliers in need of this support,” he said. “Usually it’s a bunch of them — 5, 6, 7 — but today we are talking about dozens of them.”
It hopes these efforts will restore supplier capacity to enable the manufacturer to reach its targets for 2025.
“It’s not a walk in the park, and we know that from this standpoint, the tension will remain high on the supply chain versus the demand,” said Goubet.
