AgustaWestland To Establish Helicopter MRO Plant In Algeria: Reports

AgustaWestland will set up a Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) facility in Poland alongwith two state-owned investment companies.

"The National Investment Council (NIC) and the Council of State holdings (CPE) have agreed to create a high-end helicopter manufacturing plant and much of these will be for the export market. We have to seek growth elsewhere in the real economic sphere where public and private companies are the keystone," Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was quoted as saying in a report published by Algerian Press Service, DefenceWeb reported Monday.

The plant will be co-funded by an unnamed foreign partner and two state-owned investment companies. The plant will be completed with a foreign partner and a company under the Ministry of National Defense, Sellal said. 

However, he did not give a timeline or name the foreign partner in the project, which will be 51% owned by the Algerian government with 49% of the shares going to the foreign partner.

According to a report published by North African defence news network Mena Defense on April 24, 2015, the setting up of the helicopter plant was part of the deal signed between the Algerian government and Italian defence equipment manufacturer Finmeccania Group for the delivery of several Augusta-Westland helicopters to Algerian security forces in 2011.

The deal was designed to allow the Finmeccanica Group subsidiary Augusta Westland to establish a factory that would serve the African and Middle Eastern military and civilian helicopter markets.