GKN Aerospace opens its fourth global engineering centre

As part of an ongoing programme to integrate and grow its global engineering capability, GKN Aerospace has opened an engineering and technology centre at the company's Filton, UK site, near Bristol.

The Filton engineering centre will focus on progressing future wing structure design and manufacture, with over 100 engineers expected to be based at the site providing integrated design & build capability.

Over 50 permanent staff are already in place at the Filton centre and a recruitment programme is underway to fill the remaining posts. The Filton centre will integrate with the company's other established engineering centres today - on the Isle of Wight in the UK and St. Louis, Garden Grove and Santa Ana in the USA.

This growing team, mainly based across the four engineering centres, will operate as a single global engineering force supporting over 25 GKN Aerospace manufacturing centres worldwide. They will progress product design and analysis and advance new manufacturing technologies and techniques, with each site leading on a defined area of expertise whilst drawing on the experience of the whole force to speed progress and increase engineering efficiency.

Rich Oldfield, Technical Director, GKN Aerospace commented: "Bristol is now established as the heart of our global wing structures manufacturing activity. With the National Composites Centre close by and strong links into local academic research programmes, this is the ideal base for developing our engineering capability. This move marks an important stage in the global re-shaping of engineering at GKN Aerospace, helping us maintain and extend the technology leads we have established across our businesses. Our intention is to continue to grow the design-and-build capability based at each of our engineering centres in the coming years."