Defence Business: Quickstep prepares for JSF production surge | ADM Mar 2011

Gregor Ferguson | Sydney

Perth-based Quickstep will set up a new composites manufacturing facility at Bankstown Airport in Sydney to produce components for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). This is the first step towards large-scale JSF manufacturing work worth potentially $700 million.

Perth-based composites technology Quickstep Holdings announced last month it would take over part of the former Boeing Australia manufacturing plant at Bankstown Airport to manufacture Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) components.

The company’s multi-million dollar investment at Bankstown follows the signature of a 20-year Long Term Agreement (LTA) with JSF program partner Northrop Grumman to manufacture a range of components for the F-35 Lightning II JSF. The LTA puts into effect a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin in November 2009 and will be followed in turn by annual purchase orders for components.

The first purchase order will be placed in mid-2011, ADM was told, with the first production deliveries in 2012. Under the MoU, Quickstep will manufacture 16 separate JSF components including lower side skins, maintenance access panels, fuel tank covers, lower skins and inboard weapons bay doors.

Over the life of the program the company expects this will amount to more than 36,000 components, worth up to $700 million. At its peak the program is expected to generate around $50 million a year, with deliveries coming from both Perth and Bankstown. A second MoU, also signed in 2009, will be the mechanism for further contracts with Melbourne-based Marand Precision Engineering to manufacture vertical tail skin panels for the JSF worth some $50 million.

The Bankstown facility is expected to come on-stream in 2012. Boeing announced last year it would shut down its operations there and consolidate component manufacture at its Fishermens Bend site in Melbourne; to help Quickstep it has relinquished early its lease on 4,200m2 of workshop and office space at Bankstown. Of Boeing’s 350-strong workforce only about 50 will move to Melbourne, ADM understands; initially Quickstep will employ around 70 personnel, but this will rise to about 400 at the height of production, ADM was told.

Quickstep managing director Philippe Odouard told ADM the company decided to establish its new composites facility in the eastern states because of the availability of trained manpower.

“The facility at Bankstown Airport was previously a substantial aerospace manufacturing facility with a workforce with aerospace industry skill-sets in place,” he said. “This represents an absolutely outstanding opportunity for Quickstep to lock-in the manufacturing capacity required for the delivery of the first JSF parts in 2012 and support further contracts as they are secured.”

The Commonwealth government provided some $10 million-worth of assistance to Quickstep, while the government of NSW also deployed its Major Investment Attraction Scheme to help secure the site.

Northrop Grumman’s Director of F-35 International programs Dr Ram Ramkumar said that the first purchase order would see the first test articles delivered by the end of 2011, with the first production articles due at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale facility in mid-2012. Northrop Grumman is responsible for the JSF’s centre fuselage and internal weapons bay as well as the majority of the avionics and sensors.

Quickstep’s existing facility in North Coogee, WA, will deliver what it terms Group 1 items – essentially flat panels. The Bankstown facility will be used to manufacture Group 2 and Group 3 components – with single curvature and complex/compound curvature, respectively. The company will also seek further contracts Odouard told ADM, and Bankstown provides Quickstep with the capacity to become the largest independent aerospace manufacturer in Australia.

The expansion into Bankstown will include the transfer of Quickstep’s unique, innovative composites moulding technology, including some of its R&D effort. The proprietary Quickstep process has been developed at North Coogee and differs from the autoclave technology used by contractors such as Boeing to manufacture composite components. Quickstep uses a heated, rigid or semi-rigid mould floating in a heat transfer fluid to cure the component rather than a high-temperature gas to apply pressure to the mould. The resulting process requires far lower pressures and drastically shortens the production cycle: reductions of between 50 and 90 per cent have been demonstrated, along with 70-90 per cent reductions in energy consumption.

Quickstep’s agreement with Northrop Grumman is the first of the long-awaited large-scale JSF program manufacturing contracts for Australian industry. To date, some 25 local firms have won contracts amounting to less than $200 million under the Systems Development and demonstration phase of the program. Now that Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) is under way, with the 4th LRIP batch of 31 aircraft under contract, suppliers and sub-contractors are starting to receive significant orders.

With production contracts starting to flow, production of JSF vertical tails could result in close to $1 billion-worth of business for local firms, including Marand, BAE Systems, Ferra Engineering and Quickstep, while companies like Ferra, Marand, Production Parts and Chemring stand also to make multiple tens of millions of dollars manufacturing items such as decoy flares and other EW expendables, weapons adapters, engine trailers and F135 engine components.