A company hopes its Delaware branch takes flight with a major new investment.
General Electric Aviation plans to pour $27 million into its Newark facility over the next 5 years to expand production of engine parts made from ceramic matrix composites (CMC). CMC parts are in demand for the next generation of aircraft engines because they strong, lightweight and highly heat resistant.
GE Aviation’s new LEAP engine is fueling the demand for the parts. That engine is expected to enter service in 2016 in the Airbus A320neo, Boeing MAX, and COMAC C919 made in China. The parts are also expected to be used in the GE9X engine that is still under development.
GE’s Ceramic Composite Products Operations Manager Jeffery Wessels says making he parts is labor intensive and to meet the growing demand they’ll add 70 jobs in Newark.
"In order to meet the demand for the engines we have coming up, we have to industrialize that technology," said Wessels. "We are setting up the production equipment now, we’ve developed the process, and now it’s putting enough equipment and enough people in place so that we can meet the demand for the business."
Wessels adds that the new jobs will be in a various parts of the operation.
“The biggest area will be in what we call the pre-preg layup area, where you take the composite laminate and you lay one piece over the over another piece to form a part. There also is a big demand for machinists and then engineers. We need more engineers to do all the planning and evaluations and the analysis necessary to make this stuff work.”
The new jobs are expected to pay well. Wessels says a starting engineer’s salary is between $50,000 to 75,000 while the technician positions start at about $20 per hour.
Governor Jack Markell (D) says the expansion is welcome news for the state economy.
"When General Electric had choices all over the world, they decided to invest and expand here in Delaware, " said Markell. "It's an incredible validation of the quality of the work force."
The plant currently employees 80 workers and expects to increase its output five-fold with this expansion.
Part of the investment is development of a "Lean Lab" at the Newark facility which allows engineers and manufacturers to work together to fine tune a part's manufacturing process before mass producing it.
"(Lean Labs) are for something that is new to the business overall, but has to be developed in order to make it production worthy and be very consistent at making parts day after day," said Wessels.
GE’s aviation division, worth over $18 billion, is the company’s most profitable venture, according to company officials who estimate that every two seconds an aircraft taks off with a GE engine or engine parts.
