Turbines and aircraft engines maker Rolls-Royce PLC (LSE: RR) has announced plans to invest in five new factories , four in the UK and one in Singapore, as well as in two advanced research programmes in the UK, enabling it to respond to anticipated growth in its aerospace and civil nuclear markets.
Rolls-Royce will invest over £300 million in the four UK facilities. It will also contribute approximately £95 million to the research programmes, with the UK government footing £85 million of the cost.
In the UK, Rolls-Royce will invest in a new casting facility for single crystal (SX) turbine blades to develop new, high-productivity manufacturing processes before incorporating them into production. The factory will manufacture turbine blade castings for the company's most modern, high-thrust engines.
It will also establish a manufacturing facility to make discs, critical rotating parts used in fans, compressors and turbines. The factory is to deliver a step-change improvement in the manufacture of fan and turbine discs for commercial and military aero engines.
Rolls-Royce will extend its wide chord fan blade (WCFB) facility in Barnoldswick, where it currently manufactures large WCFBs for commercial aircraft, to manufacture advanced military blades, to meet future demand from its involvement in the engine programme of the Lightning Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft.
The company is providing hollow blisked fans for the LiftSystem on the VSTOL (Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing) version of the aircraft and for the F136 conventional engine.
Additional capability for the manufacture of civil wide chord fan blades will be located in a new factory in Singapore announced separately today, which will complement the existing WCFB facility at Barnoldswick.
The fourth UK facility the group will invest in is a new factory to manufacture, assemble and test components for new civil nuclear power stations, including pressure vessels, heat exchangers and other large and complex reactor parts. The facility will have strong links with the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, announced by the UK government on July 15 2009, in which Rolls-Royce will be the leading industrial partner.
Rolls-Royce and its partners are investing in a Rolls-Royce-led research programme valued at around £90 million that is central to the development of low carbon aircraft engine technologies. The UK government will provide £45 million through its Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to support the research. The TSB is currently considering a research programme called SILOET (Strategic Investment in Low Carbon Engine Technology), which is expected to deliver a substantial improvement in CO2 emissions and hence engine fuel economy.
The second research project is called SAMULET (Strategic Affordable Manufacturing in the UK through Leading Environmental Technologies), a Rolls-Royce-led collaborative programme to accelerate the development of manufacturing and product technologies.
It will focus on productivity and environmental improvements, including efficient advanced manufacturing processes and lower engine fuel consumption. The programme will be closely linked with the advanced manufacturing research centres. It will be valued at up to £90 million over four years and is receiving support of £28.5 million from the TSB and £11.5 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with further support under discussion with regional bodies.
It announced separately that in Singapore, the company will build a new WCFB factory, located at the group’s Seletar Campus alongside the previously announced `Facility of the Future', which will test and assemble Trent aero engines.
Total investment in the Seletar Campus, including investment in the WCFB factory, will exceed around £300 million. It will create approximately 500 new jobs when fully operational, bringing the number of people employed by the group in Singapore to around 2,000. Construction of the Facility of the Future and all other elements of the campus, including a regional training centre, will begin in the first quarter of 2010.
The new factory will be the first outside the UK to manufacture Rolls-Royce hollow titanium WCFBs.
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