GE to spend $200 mln on two factories for jet engine parts

Nippon Carbon

28/10/2015 16:24

By Alwyn Scott 
    Oct 28 (Reuters) - General Electric Co  GE.N  said on 
Wednesday it will spend more than $200 million to build two 
factories in Alabama to expand its capacity to make high 
strength materials for jet engines and power plant turbines. 
    The plants in Huntsville will produce silicon-carbon ceramic 
materials for LEAP engines on thousands of single-aisle Boeing 
 BA.N  and Airbus  AIR.PA  jetliners sold for delivery over the 
next decade. The LEAP engine was developed by CFM International, 
a joint venture between GE and France's Snecma (Safran) 
 SAF.PA . 
    The ultra-light materials also will be used in military 
engines, GE9X engines for Boeing's 777X jetliner and gas-fired 
power turbines, GE said. 
    With $21.9 million in U.S. Air Force funding, one of the 
factories will make silicon carbon fibers under license from NGS 
Advanced Fibers, a joint venture of Nippon Carbon Co Ltd 
 5302.T , Safran and GE. 
    The adjacent plant will make ceramic matrix composite (CMC) 
tape, a long, stiff material that will be used by GE's recently 
finished plant in Asheville, North Carolina, to make jet engine 
parts. 
    Construction on a 100-acre site is scheduled to start in 
mid-2016. Production is due to start in 2018. The factories will 
eventually employ 300 workers.   
    The factories will supply more CMC materials as GE and CFM 
ramp up engine production. CFM expects to turn out 1,800 LEAP 
engines a year by the end of the decade, GE said.  
    CMC parts resist higher temperatures and have about 
one-third the weight of current metal alloys, so their use in 
the engine's high-pressure turbine would make it more 
fuel-efficient, GE said. 
    CMC is a significant shift in engine materials away from 
heavier metal alloys, GE said, noting it has been developing CMC 
for more than two decades. 
    "We pretty much got to the point where you run out of the 
capability of metal," said Sanjay Correa, vice president of the 
CMC program at GE Aviation.  
    GE said it will offer CMC parts to retrofit older engines, 
and that the silicon-carbon fiber produced in Huntsville will be 
available to other companies. 
 
 (Reporting by Alwyn Scott) 
 ((alwyn.scott@thomsonreuters.com; 646-223-6132; Reuters 
Messaging: alwyn.scott.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: GENERAL ELECTRIC FACTORIES/