Flow International in Jeffersonville celebrates $30M airbus contract

Clark County

Discussion

October 14, 2008

By DAVID A. MANN The News and Tribune Tue Oct 14, 2008, 05:12 PM EDT

Officials at Flow International Corp., celebrated the recent signing of a more than $30 million contract with French aircraft maker Airbus during a Monday morning event at the company’s Jeffersonville plant.

Under the contract, Flow will manufacture for Airbus machine technology that uses waterjets to cut aircraft

wing skin, fuselages, struts and other airplane components, said Charley Brown, chief executive officer for Kent, Wash.-based Flow.

Flow’s technology will be used in the manufacture of Airbus’ 350 XWB, an extra-wide-body aircraft that has generated more than 450 orders from nearly 30 airlines globally.

Using nine of Flow’s ultra-high-pressure waterjet machines, the planes will be manufactured at Airbus European plants, Brown said.

“Today is not only about celebrating our partnership with Airbus, but it’s also a celebration of the technology that brought this partnership together,” he said.

According to Flow’s Web site, waterjets are becoming an increasingly popular form of cutting, because it can cut parts with no damage from heat and without the mechanical stresses caused by other cutting methods.

Flow has worked with Airbus previously; however, the new contract is global, rather than with individual plants.

It was awarded in July, just a few months after an expansion of Flow’s Jeffersonville facility — which is located just off Hamburg Pike — was announced. That came as a Canadian plant was closed.

Much of the economic news has been bleak of late, with troubled markets around the globe.

Allan McArtor, chairman of Airbus Americas, said the economic trouble has not reached Airbus, but that it was not immune in the case that its customers could not get credit or if there were a large drop in the number of regular airline travelers.

Despite its European headquarters, McArtor said the company invests about $10 billion in the U.S. economy annually.

Monday’s event was a celebration, he said, noting that Flow competed with companies from around the world in order to land the contract.

“It’s a chance for this community to remind itself of the technological excellence that exists right here.”