Britten-Norman this week opened the recently repatriated production line for its Islander multirole aircraft at Bembridge in southern England. This follows a decision announced in June to close the factory it has used in Romania for many years.
Ahead of a September 21 event at the Bembridge site on the Isle of Wight, Britten-Norman and Cranfield Aerospace Solutions (CAeS) said they have “paused” the merger plans they announced earlier this year. But the companies will continue joint work to develop a hydrogen-powered version of the Islander under a “strategic partnership agreement.”
Returning to its historical home of Bembridge, Britten-Norman said it will employ two hangars that have been underutilized since 2010 to house a production line to facilitate the construction of up to 16 aircraft annually. Although the company has not delivered a new-build Islander since November 2020, the assembled collection of jigs and tooling recently returned from Romania will be used as Britten-Norman endeavors to achieve its pre-Covid output of two aircraft a year. It aims to produce eight units a year within 24 months.
“Getting scale manufacture in Romania has been tricky for us,” explained Britten-Norman CEO William Hynett. He added that plans to return full production to the UK have been gestating for around 15 years. Noting that the company had been a “ridiculously early outsourcer” when it set up the Romanian plant “behind the Iron Curtain” back in 1968, he acknowledged that production levels have taken “a bit of a nosedive over the last 20 years.”
According to Britten-Norman, returning the entire production process to the UK will allow for greater quality control and a shorter supply chain. The company has its own Part 21G manufacturing approval based on its UK production and design organization approvals. It holds UK, EASA, and FAA type certificates for the Islander family of aircraft.
Privately owned Britten-Norman employs around 120 people and intends to increase this to around 150 in the next few years across various facilities, including a London office and a design office in Southampton. Another site at Lee-on-Solent will continue to serve as the company’s MRO facility and final assembly line.
As a committed supporter of graduate placements and apprenticeship schemes, Britten-Norman recently welcomed the 2023 cohort’s first three candidates to join the team at Bembridge, strengthening a talent pool that could outsource its skills elsewhere, depending on demand.
Around 10 percent of the 441 aircraft registered as being in operation across some 60 countries are turboprop-powered, with the remainder having piston engines. In fact, Britten-Norman has delivered almost 1,300 Islanders to more than 100 countries, but many of these do not appear on active registration databases and this could include some that are temporarily out of service.
With CAeS, Britten-Norman plans to introduce hydrogen-powered versions of the nine-seater aircraft, which can operate in regional airline service or multiple other applications. The program is aiming to achieve certification and be ready to start deliveries by the end of 2026.
As noted, however, the two companies have not completed their planned merger, which was to have concluded with the release of the remaining tranche of £10 million ($12.3 million) in new capital from a group of venture capitalists. The new combined entity had then planned to embark on a Series B funding round to raise a further £30 million.
However, likening the proposed merger to rushing into a marriage, Hynett commented that “our collective view is that we’re spending too much time focusing on the detail and not enough time focusing on the project,” defining the hydrogen collaboration as “an option that remains open to both of us on a voluntary basis.”
This raises questions as to how exactly each party will now contribute to development efforts aimed at producing a technology demonstrator aircraft by the end of 2024. B-N Group, Britten-Norman’s parent company, recorded a post-tax loss of £3.6 million ($4.4 million) in its most recent published accounts.
“We’re not going to commit to something without having some sort of idea what the commitment involves and what that means in terms of volumes,” Hynett insisted. “We have other things to focus on here, such as getting our conventional build [production line] established.”
Nonetheless, a provision is being made to integrate hydrogen propulsion into Bembridge’s manufacturing capacity. This might include a second production line, potentially to retrofit existing conventionally powered airframes with hydrogen systems under the Green Futures Scheme.
“Our current supply plan is probably to take a [new build] conventional aircraft and enable it to be retrofit-ready," elaborated Hynett. “However, if that doesn’t work, we know there’s such a healthy market in secondhand conventional aircraft anyway that at the very least we’ll take a trade-back.”
Currently, demand for refurbished, preowned, conventionally powered Islanders, such as the five on order from Spirit Air India, is outstripping supply. However, it is hoped that upcoming options for finance and leasing, as well as an uptick in new-build volumes, will help redress this imbalance.
Britten-Norman aims to reduce the lead times for new-build aircraft from 12 months to three. The first aircraft to roll off the new UK production line is destined for delivery to a customer in the Falkland Islands in May 2024.
The UK’s departure from the European Union, and resulting exclusion from EASA membership, has resulted in what Hynett described as “unnecessary friction” caused by the failure to agree on post-Brexit mutual acceptance of Part 145 maintenance approvals. Hynett, an active supporter of Brexit who has since complained about how it has been implemented, told AIN that Britten-Norman has not been as adversely impacted by the change as British aerospace manufacturers who are more focused on exporting to customers in the EU.