2017, "the year of sales" for Lufthansa Technik |
Emilie Drab in Hamburg |
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28 MAR 2018 | 570 words
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© Lufthansa Technik |
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Lufthansa Technik has just closed an excellent 2017. The Lufthansa group's MRO division published a turnover which was up by 5 % to 5.4 billion Euro and an operational result which had grown by 1 % to 415 million Euro for the year. Most of all, Lufthansa Technik has ensured its long term growth with 440 contracts worth a total value of 13.2 billion Euro.
The EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) is still the most important region for the company and accounts for two thirds of Lufthansa Technik's turnover. While growth is sustained in this region, so are sales: they increased in value by 9 % in 2017 thanks to new contracts, such as with El Al which has become a new customer, or the increase in work on the fleet (particularly engines) for its most important customer, Lufthansa.
It's no surprises that the Asia Pacific region has also been very dynamic. One slight blip is that although Chief Executive Finance Constanze Hufenbecher says that growth is impressive, it is slightly less important than forecasted in value terms. Finally, the America region, which is saturated in particular in North America, is down 2%, notably due to negative Euro-dollar parity. Nevertheless, good contracts have been won with Air Canada, Pratt & Whitney Canada and JetBlue, and the volume should be increasing over the coming months with the expansion of the Tulsa site's capacities.
This project is perfectly in keeping with Lufthansa Technik's activity internationalisation strategy. First MRO company to set up shop in Dubai South's Aviation District, it has launched two major projects in Poland: Xeos, with GE Aviation for the maintenance of GEnx-2Bs and GE9Xs, and EME Aero, with MTU for the maintenance of PW1000Gs. It has also integrated 787 line maintenance capacity at Shannon and has expanded its Sofia facility.
At the same time, the company is working to develop new products such as mobile services (technicians sent out to site), the expansion of its engine cleaning capacities and new galley layout solutions. But close attention is also being paid to digitisation, which Johannes Bussmann, Chairman of the Executive Board of Lufthansa Technik, thinks is "the future of our industry". This is making a place for itself in all domains, with transformation to paperless workshops, infra-red part tracking in workshops, deployment of predictive maintenance and more intense equipment monitoring. All of these transformations are "making things better but are not revolutionising the business model".
What will bring this revolution, however, is Aviatar, which Lufthansa Technik launched in 2017 and which Johannes Bussmann see as the "future Amazon of the industry". This is an open platform into which various applications are integrated to access MRO products and services, including those offered by companies other than Lufthansa Technik.
A few applications were presented during the annual press conference, such as the TOOLnow tool sharing application - when an operator needs a tool they can connect to this platform to make a loan request then monitor its development and the availability of the tool they are looking for. Aviatar may also be used to access data on certain specific problems encountered during maintenance operations which may have occurred with another operator and find recommendations and resolution models faster than at present. The system is still only in its initial stages but Lufthansa Technik is seeing it as a revolution. "We want to shape the digitisation of our industry with modern fleet management solutions", summarises Johannes Bussmann.
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Emilie Drab
Assistant editor
Civil aerospace, Air transport
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