Aviation parts manufacturer Pratt & Whitney plans to invest $206 million to expand its facility in Columbus, Georgia, the company announced at the Paris Air Show last week.
The investment will add 81,000 square feet to Pratt & Whitney’s Columbus Engine Center, where it builds its signature GTF aviation engine for aerospace companies including Embraer and Airbus.
The funds will also go toward purchasing new machinery and equipment, which would increase the facility’s production capacity to 400 GTF engines a year, according to a state release.
Construction is slated to begin in the third quarter of 2023, a Pratt & Whitney spokesperson told Manufacturing Dive in an email. The expansion is expected to be complete by 2028 and will create 400 engineer, mechanic and operator jobs.
“This investment will help ensure that we have the infrastructure, machinery, and equipment upgrades in place to provide the best products and services to our customers worldwide,” Pratt & Whitney President Shane Eddy said in a statement.
Pratt & Whitney has 11 manufacturing plants in the U.S. and is a subsidiary of RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies. The aviation and aerospace manufacturer announced its rebranding as RTX at its Investor Day event in Paris last week.
Pratt & Whitney is pushing to expand production capacity for the GTF engine as it continues to be the manufacturer’s biggest growth driver with more than 10,000 current orders, Eddy said at RTX’s Investor Day at the Paris Air Show last week.
Eddy noted in his remarks, however, that the popularity of the signature engine amid supply chain issues has caused a significant backlog of orders. The company president added that while such issues are beginning to ease with increased production rates, more improvements are needed.
“I want to be clear . . . this is the result of gaps in our industrial performance,” Eddy said. “This is not tied to the performance of the engine.”
