The Basque aeronautical industry grows and creates employment in the Basque Country in 2014

The Basque aeronautical industry created employment in the Basque Country in 2014 as the workforce of the Basque plants of the companies in the Hegan cluster grew by 4.4%.

The Basque aircraft construction industry increased their sales as well as their staff last year, as the crisis started to come to an end in the Spanish state. This led the president of the Basque aeronautical cluster Hegan and head of the company Aernnova, Iñaki Lopez Gandasegui, to state that “we maintain the moderate but continuous rate of growth of the Basque aeronautical sector”.

Moreover, the expected upwards trend in the world market of commercial aircraft in the next twenty years allows to state that “the airline sector is in good health”, as the heads of the Basque cluster Hegan said yesterday. This makes it reasonable to forecast an increase in the turnover of the Basque companies of nearly 5% this year.

The total turnover of the companies in the Aeronautics and Space cluster of the Basque Country was 1,755 million Euros last year, which means an increase of 2% with regard to 2013. Besides, employment grew by 1% in all their plants throughout the world and reached 12,546 employees. This increase went up to 4.4% in the Basque Country, with 4,278 highly trained and qualified employees. As for the sales, the turnover of the plants situated in the Basque Country was 874 million Euros, 8.1% more than in the previous year.

We have recently known that the company Industria de Turbo Propulsores (ITP), based in Zamudio, Bizkaia, will take part in an order of 200 aircraft engines for Emirates airline amounting to more than 1,472 million dollars, the largest order in their history received by their partner Rolls-Royce.