The Mahindra Group today clinched a multi-million dollar aerospace contract with European consortium Airbus at the Paris Air Show, marking a major milestone in the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

Mahindra Group subsidiary Mahindra Aerospace bagged the multi-year aero-components manufacture and supply contract.

“This is significant as a vote of confidence in Make in India, the ‘first tika’ in this broad vision, as well as a vote of confidence in Mahindra,” Anand Mahindra, chairman and managing director of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, told PTI on the sidelines of the Air Show which opened here today.

“Getting such a contract is a lengthy process which takes a lot of cooking and brewing and this implies Mahindra is now in the inner circle of suppliers,” he said.

The contract, the value of which has not been disclosed, will involve a variety of Mahindra produced metallic components, in excess of a million parts per annum, to be fitted into several Airbus aircraft programmes as part of assemblies produced by Premium Aerotec.

The parts will be produced at the new Mahindra Aerostructures facility located at Narsapura, near Bengaluru, with deliveries to Premium Aerotec’s facilities in Germany scheduled to commence this year.

Mahindra said, “We as a group, with Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Aerospace, are the largest supplier to Airbus out of India but the potential remains to substantially hike the amount the company sources from India. As Airbus raises its procurement from India, it will be a great validation of Make in India.”

“When we began our aerospace journey in 2008, India had yet to establish a presence in the global aerospace supply chain. We committed then to bridge that gap with our investments in aerospace manufacturing, and this new chapter in our relationship with Airbus attests to that commitment,” he said.

“This is our vision to take ‘Make in India’ from policy to reality: Build bridges across cultures, countries and businesses,” he added.

The US$ 16.9-billion Mumbai-headquartered Mahindra Group, with over 200,000 employees across 100 countries had set up its utility aircraft and aerostructure manufacturing operation with Mahindra Aerospace in 2008.

“We are the only Indian company that builds planes, which are built in Australia, and we are the only business house that covers all three wings of defence - Army, Navy and Air Force,” said S P Shukla, Group President and CEO of Mahindra Aerospace and Defence Sector.

“Today every major aerospace company is in dialogue with us. With Premium Aerotec, Mahindra Aerospace have started a journey to build capability and capacity in India,” Shukla said.

Lars Kastle, Senior Vice President Finance, Procurement and IT Management, Premium Aerotec, said, “For Premium Aerotec, this is the start of a strategic partnership with Mahindra Aerospace. It represents an important step in our restructuring efforts to rearrange our supply chain in collaboration with global partners.”

Mahindra’s Narsapura unit, the hub of the new manufacture and supply contract, was inaugurated in 2013 and is certified to demanding Airbus specifications as well as aerospace industry-standard requirements.

Premium Aerotec is a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Airbus Group and one of the world’s leading suppliers for the development and manufacture of large aircraft structures for civil and military aircraft.

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