Ascent Aerospace announced today that its Ascent Integration European operation has been awarded a contract by Airbus to retrofit the Airbus Broughton (Wales) A330 wing assembly lines to the new A330neo configuration.

Under this contract, Ascent Integration will have overall project management responsibility for the design, integration, build and installation of the equipment and tooling to assemble the new A330neo wing. They will be supported internally by Ascent Engineering (Seattle) and Global Tooling Systems (Michigan), as well as by several key external subcontractors based in the UK. The project is significant not only in its scope, but in the fact that the assembly line modification will occur while the existing wing lines continue to support ongoing production of the current A330 configuration.

Brian Williams, CEO of Ascent Aerospace, reflected on the recent award: "Although our Ascent Integration European operation was only recently acquired (from Areva), the team continues to perform at a high level and has firmly established itself over the years as a valued partner to Airbus. With this A330neo project, we are pleased to be able to incorporate some of our tooling capabilities into the system solution. It is a key facet of our strategic plan to have our Ascent Integration and Tooling Groups working seamlessly together on large, complex projects."