UK's Aerotek, Indian SIKA Partner In Landing Gear MRO Venture

India’s SIKA and Uk’s Aerotek Aviation have launched joint venture, Aerotek Sika Aviation Engineering, to provide manufacturing and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of Landing Gear, Hydraulic line replaceable units (LRUs) and Actuators for fixed and rotary wing aircraft.

Launched under a Make in India initiative, the Aerotek Sika facility is capable of handling all types of Landing Gear manufacturing and MRO for helicopters and aircraft, from trainer aircraft and UAVs up to the size of narrow body aircraft, both the companies announced jointly today.

Located within SIKA’s 6.5 acre campus in Bangalore, Aerotek Sika has been established from day one as a mirror site, both in terms of facilities and processes, to the Aerotek UK plant in England, in line with international standards.

Having focused initially on military customers, Aerotek Sika has over the course of the last few months been audited and approved by the Indian Ministry of Defence’s Center for Military Airworthiness & Certification (CEMILAC) for “Manufacturing, Assembly, Testing, MRO of Landing Gear, Hydraulic LRUs and Actuators,” as well as by various divisions of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.

Subsequently, Aerotek Sika has secured a customer launch order for the manufacture, assembly and testing of a number of shipsets of a 6.5 ton fixed wing aircraft.

The company has also secured a separate contract for the design, development, qualification and certification of the landing gear retraction actuator for a 2 ton medium-altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, which has already completed the critical design review milestone and commenced prototype manufacturing.

Going forward, Aerotek Sika is geared to expand its manufacturing and MRO for Indian customers, thereby saving valuable foreign exchange and providing significantly reduced turnaround times (TATs).

In addition, the company is primed to enter into alliances with global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to enable the latter to provide Indian customers with localised support for their landing gears resulting in faster TATs and optimised costs considering simplified logistics. Moreover, through such alliances OEMs can also liquidate offset obligations through Aerotek Sika with respect to both manufacture and MRO of landing gears, with such offsets being eligible for the 1.5x multiplier available for MSMEs.

Aerotek Sika has also initiated the certification process required for civil/commercial MRO, and is working towards obtaining Part 145 approvals by the end of 2017 from the Director General of Civil Aviation (India), European Aviation Safety Agency and Federal Aviation Administration (USA).