Economy

Hu visits Bombardier plane maker

By Wu Jiao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-06-27 05:08

Toronto - Chinese President Hu Jintao squeezed time out his busy schedule in Toronto to tour the Bombardier plane maker, a sign expected to further enhance the cooperation between Chinese aerospace industry and the European giant.

The event also marks the last item of Hu's three-day state visit paid to Canada, in which Hu and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to double its trade to $60 billion by 2015.

In a hall carefully staged with panels and plane samples, Pierre Beaudoin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bombardier Inc, delivers a warm-worded welcome speech in which he said that the plane maker aims to maximize its cooperation with China and make the cooperation mutually beneficial to each other.

He listed the cooperation between Bombardier with related Chinese companies in producing the C series commercial jetliner as a model of successful partnership.

Zhang Jianwei, President and Chief Country Representative of Bombardier in China, made explicit introduction on Bombardier's presence in China.

Hu later tours the introduction boards and samples established by the corporation in the spacious hall and also boarded sample planes for inspection.

Hu said the cooperation between Bombardier and Chinese enterprises is the example of bilateral trade that benefits each side, and wished brighter future for the cooperation.

Hu also pledged during the tour that enterprises from the two countries work together to win a future of more solid cooperation in bilateral ties.

The CSeries commercial jetliner which are optimized for the longer range, are said to deliver the lowest operating costs in their class.

The President stopped from time to time to make inquiries on the new airplane's capacity and how the innovative technologies stand.

Beaudoin said that now more than 200 Chinese engineers have joined their Canadian colleagues on the research of the C series, and altogether there are now nearly 4,000 Chinese employees within Bombardier now.

The cooperation estimates that with the expansion of business in China, the corporation is expected to bring 10,000 jobs to China by 2016.

China, with its robust economic growth, is estimated as one of the fast-growing market from aerospace industry.

Bombardier has begun cooperation with Chinese industries since 50 years ago, and now it becomes a major partner in Chinese aerospace market.

Construction of the facility that will build the fuselage for the all-new Bombardier CSeries mainline commercial jetliner has begun in China in March this year. The event was hailed by Bombarider as another milestone in Bombardier's progress toward a 2013 entry-into-service for the CSeries aircraft in Shenyang, China.

The 21,000 m2 (226,042 ft2) facility will be operated by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC), a subsidiary of the state-owned aviation industrial entity, China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC). SAC is a key supplier in the Bombardier CSeries aircraft program.

"Bombardier believes in the China aviation industry," said Beaudoin while taking part in the founding ceremony of the plant in March.

China, with 1,400 aircraft, has become one of the fastest-growing aviation markets, eclipsing Japan as Asia's largest, according to figures from the International Air Transport Association. And the market has seen increasingly fierce competition from major airplane makers.

A survey done by Bombardier said that China might need at least 300 business airplanes by 2019, as China is rising as one of the biggest business airplane market, according to Liao Xuefeng, an official of Bombardier China in an online interview last September.

The Shenyang facility has already joined two other new CSeries aircraft installations that are already under construction. Bombardier, a world-leading manufacturer of commercial aircraft and business jets to rail transportation equipment, systems and services, records revenues of $19.7 billion for the past fiscal year.