Burnley aerospace firm to shed 130 ‘contracted’ jobs

The French-owned aerospace company, which has a huge base in Bancroft Road, Burnley, confirmed the news to the Express, just days after the Government announced it was to become a national centre of excellence.

The job losses are due to a drop in demand from Rolls Royce for its Trent 700 engine, parts for which are manufactured in Burnley, and are used in the Airbus A330 passenger plane.

A spokesman for Aircelle said: “We can confirm that due to a decrease in demand from Rolls Royce for the legacy Trent 700 product (the engines for the current Airbus A330), we will be reducing our manufacturing load over the coming two years.

“This ramp down is more severe than expected, meaning we have to reduce manufacturing load in the short term, rather than managing a smooth transition into the new programmes - for which we continue to prepare.

“Beyond the two year period, our manufacturing load will recover to a similar level to today, albeit with a different mix of products and volumes such as the A320 neo, A330 neo, HTF7000 5th application and C919 enter into service and ramp up. In order to minimise the impact of this short term reduction in manufacturing, we are assessing our cost base and consequently we expect to reduce our number of on-site contractors by up to 130 by the end of 2015.

“To help reduce the impact of this reduction, we will review all external recruitment and encourage internal recruitment for new vacancies.

“We continue to review the impact of the reduction in load and we are looking at additional overhead cost reductions. However, we are not currently planning a redundancy programme.”

In a separate development, the Burnley Express revealed on Tuesday that Aircelle had been selected to receive £4.6m. from a government fund to create a UK nacelle structure centre of excellence in Burnley.

The grant which will see the company create 26 new jobs and safeguard 449 jobs.