West Jefferson, North Carolina – GE Aviation hosted a grand opening ceremony July 9, 2015, at the site of its machining factory in West Jefferson, North Carolina.
GE Aviation’s Randy Hobbs, general manager of Rotating Parts & Compressor Airfoils, and Tim Tucker, West Jefferson plant manager, were joined by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, Secretary of Commerce John E. Skvarla, III, Assistant Secretary for Rural Development Dr. Pat Mitchell, and officials from the Town of West Jefferson and Ashe County to commemorate the groundbreaking.
“The expansion here in West Jefferson represents GE Aviation’s unprecedented supply chain growth,” Hobbs stated. “We’re investing more and more every year in order to deliver on the more than 14,000 commercial engines in our backlog.”
GE Aviation’s $65 million investment in the new 80,000ft2 expansion will allow for increased capacity as the shop assumes additional machining work. The increase in volume is driven largely by orders for the new LEAP jet engine of CFM International, a 50/50 joint company of GE and Snecma (Safran) of France. To date, CFM has logged total orders and commitments with airlines for more than 9,550 LEAP engines, which enters service in 2016. It will power the new Airbus A320neo, Boeing 737 MAX, and COMAC (China) C919 aircraft for airlines worldwide.
GE has hired 45 additional employees for the expanded facility so far and plans to hire 60 more over the next couple of years, pushing the plant’s total workforce to more than 285. These employees do both rough and finished machining of components for the core of the engine – disks, spools, and shafts.
The new facility is part of a larger commitment by GE Aviation to invest $195 million across its North Carolina operations through 2017. GE Aviation employs more than 1,500 people in North Carolina at sites in Durham, West Jefferson, Wilmington, and Asheville. The West Jefferson expansion, combined with the new facility in Asheville and plant and equipment upgrades at existing sites across North Carolina, will account for more than 240 additional GE jobs in North Carolina by 2017.
To help with the new workload, GE has partnered with Wilkes Community College. The training program at the Tigra facility allows current and prospective employees to train in a hands-on environment with state-of-the-art machinery.
In addition to components for the LEAP engine, the West Jefferson facility will continue machining components for the GEnx, GE90, GP7200, CF6, CFM56, and CF34 jet engines.
Source: GE Aviation