Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

Registered UK Charity (No. 115342)

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 162,257 pages of information and 244,498 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Airbus UK

From Graces Guide

Airbus UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of Airbus SE which produces wings for the Airbus aircraft family. When Airbus was incorporated as a joint-stock company in 2001 BAE transferred its UK Airbus facilities in return for a 20% share of the new company. These facilities became Airbus UK. Airbus UK has two main sites responsible for the design and manufacture of the high-technology wings for all Airbus models as well as overall design and supply of the fuel system. For most Airbus models the company is responsible for overall design and supply of landing gear. With a total workforce of around 13,000 people:-

  • Filton near Bristol where the engineering and design activity takes place along with some manufacturing
  • Broughton in Flintshire, Wales where other major wing component manufacturing and all wing assembly takes place. Each site employs over 6,000 people.

Hawker Siddeley (which merged with British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) in 1977 to form British Aerospace) was part of the first Airbus project, the Airbus A300. The British government withdrew support in 1969 but Hawker Siddeley was allowed to continue as supplier of the aircraft's wings due to the advanced stages of design and the reluctance of other nations to take over the wing design. In 1979 BAe rejoined the Airbus consortium. In 2001 Airbus Industrie became Airbus S.A.S., the Airbus Integrated Company.

Airbus UK started work on the wings for the Airbus A380 in August 2002.

In April 2006 BAE Systems announced its intention to sell its share of Airbus SE to EADS. BAE originally sought to agree a price with EADS through an informal process. However, due to the slow pace of negotiations and disagreements over price, BAE exercised its put option which saw investment bank Rothschild appointed to give an independent valuation.

2019 The business and assets of Airbus Group Ltd was sold to Airbus Operations Ltd[1]


See Also

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Sources of Information

  1. 2019 Annual report