GE Aerospace plans to increase sourcing of components from India

Engine maker GE Aerospace plans to increase sourcing of components from India, which is a growing aviation market, a senior company official has said.

The company has a manufacturing facility in Pune and the John F Welch Technology Centre in Bengaluru. Currently, it has 13 major suppliers, including Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL).

Mahendra Nair, Group Vice President for Commercial Programs at GE Aerospace, said India's contribution to the supply chain will increase.

"We have got some very capable companies in India with the right engineering talent, the right production footprint and as long as they can meet the technical standards that we are looking for, it is only upside and it is going to grow.

"India is a market that is going to grow and that makes sense for us to continue sourcing more from India," Nair told PTI during a recent interview in the national capital.

Vikram Rai, South Asia Chief Executive Officer of GE Aerospace, said the company's sourcing has gone up by 20 times during 2018 to 2022 period.

India is one of the fastest-growing civil aviation markets in the world and domestic carriers are expanding their fleets.

About the global supply chain situation, Nair said the situation across the aerospace industry is "tough".

"It is going to take at least another two years before the supply chain gets better. The reason is... the demand on the supply chain is growing 25% every year.

"Even in a constrained environment we are seeing right now, it is still an output of 25% more than last year. If you were to keep the demand the same, you could have seen a dramatic improvement but demand is going up 25 per cent every year. It includes OEM demand, airframe demand as well as the service demand," he noted.

GE Aerospace also has an equal joint venture with Safran Aircraft Engines called CFM makes the LEAP engines, which also power many narrow-body planes in India.

Currently, around 1,300 engines of GE Aerospace and CFM are used in various planes of Indian carriers.

Also, GE Aerospace's defence engines and systems power Indian Airforce's Light Combat Aircraft Tejas Mk1, helicopters and Indian Navy's aircraft carrier battleships and frigates.

The company has around 3,000 employees in India.

Meanwhile, GE Aerospace's GEnx commercial aviation engines have completed two million flight hours with South Asian airlines.

At present, 90 GEnx engines power wide-body Boeing planes of Air India, Vistara and Biman Bangladesh in South Asia, and Air India Group accounted for more than 90% of the two million flight hours clocked by these engines.