An employee repairs a helicopter blade at Airbus’ new Paris-Le Bourget blade production site in France. Credit: Airbus S.A.S.

Airbus Helicopters has opened a new blade manufacturing facility at the Paris-Le Bourget site in France with an investment of more than €100m.

The facility spans across 18ha and is designed to produce blades for all range of Airbus helicopters.

Built as part of Airbus’ industrial strategy, the 35,000m² hangar facility will use both automation and cobotisation processes, which enable people and robots to work together, to perform operations.

The Paris-Le Bourget site expects to accommodate more flexible work loads as a result of work-based production rather than product-based production process.

The blade-specific specialisation site currently employs 640 staff, 100 students, interns and temporary workers to produce and repair roughly 4,000 blades a year.

“The Paris-Le Bourget site expects to accommodate more flexible work loads as a result of work-based production rather than product-based production process.”

It relocates Airbus’ activities from La Courneuve site in France and aims to transform its organisation of work, industrial processes, and eventually, the company’s competitiveness.

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The Paris-Le Bourget site also intends to reduce production costs and manufacturing cycles for helicopters.

In a separate development, Airbus Helicopters announced that its third H160 prototype has received a fresh coat of paint and features a ‘carbon’ livery in order to join the Airbus A350 XWB MSN2 flight-test aircraft.

The prototype was built using advanced composite materials provided by Airbus partner Hexcel.

The Airbus H160 represents the first civil helicopter featuring a full composite fuselage, which includes a lighter fuel-saving airframe, and offers performance optimisation and easy maintenance.