Rolls-Royce say they have delivered the 8,000th engine made at their site in Dahlewitz, Germany.
The engine, a BR725, will be shipped to Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation in Savannah, Georgia, USA, to power its current flagship business jet, the G650ER.
“The Dahlewitz site, located south of Berlin, started production in June 1995 and today employs approximately 3,000 people. As the Rolls-Royce Centre of Excellence for business aviation engines, the site has an important role in our global manufacturing and development footprint. Alongside production of the BR725, a range of business jet engines including the BR710 and Pearl 15 engines, as well as the Trent XWB for the Airbus A350, are assembled at the facility. The Dahlewitz site is also home to development and testing facilities for Rolls-Royce’s new power gearbox for the UltraFan® demonstrator programme.”
The firm say that the 8,000th engine is a member of the BR700 family that powers some of the fastest, longest-range and largest business jets on the market.
More than 4,700 BR700 engines have been built to date and the fleet has recorded more than 27 million cumulative operating hours.
Dr Dirk Geisinger, Director Business Aviation, Rolls-Royce and Chairman of Rolls-Royce Deutschland, said:
“We are very proud of this achievement, which comes as the result of 25 years of hard, dedicated work from our Dahlewitz team. And I’m especially proud of our employees who are committed, even in these unprecedented times, to delivering world-class products and to supporting our global customer base.”
Wonder if the 9000 job losses RR announced recently will affect this facility or will UK bear the brunt of it?
It will very likely be UK Derby. Bristol is insulated quite a bit because of the defence work. There are some issues with UK operations as they aren’t as efficient as they could be (mainly UK government polices on employment rules). Also the UK government should invest more in the Tempest programme to help ease some of the problems facing Rolls-Royce. They should get the civil nuclear nuclear SMR programme up and running as then Rolls-Royce can retrain and redeploy some staff on both these programmes. They should also maybe have a big R&D programme through innovate-UK on new aerospace… Read more »
I would say Hybrid propulsion for regional aircraft should get funding, whilst fully electric commercial flight is some way off turbines coupled with electric fans should receive investment. With UK needing to meet climate targets this is definitely one area that could easily be justified. This also links into Tempest where their a need to create more electrical power from a turbine. Light weight power storage is another area as well as super conductors that will make electric flight more efficient. Lastly cyber security, no good spending billion on new tech only to have it stolen.