OREANDA-NEWS. Rolls-Royce is today announcing plans to invest more than £30m at its site in Washington, Tyne & Wear, UK, creating a new facility to manufacture a range of aerospace discs for in-service engines. The new Fleet Support plant is expected to be fully operational in 2018 and will sit alongside our world-class UK discs manufacturing facility, which officially opened in June 2014.

The new investment is part of Rolls-Royce’s ongoing industrial transformation and marks the final stage of the modernisation programme for disc manufacturing in the North East of England. The construction of a new facility will allow Rolls-Royce to make use of our specialist workforce and agile manufacturing techniques. It will also complete the planned closure of the existing site in nearby Sunderland, which is over 60 years old.

The new 8000m2 facility will have the capacity to manufacture well over 1,500 fan and turbine discs a year for use in a wide-range of existing engines, including Civil Aerospace applications (Trent 500, Trent 800 and the RB211 engines) and alongside the Defence Aerospace applications (EJ200 and Adour engines). Fan discs and turbine discs are at the heart of the engine, operating in extreme conditions.

Mike Mosley, Rolls-Royce, Chief Operating Officer – Supply Chain, said: “Rolls-Royce is focused on transforming our global industrial base to develop solutions that our customers can trust. Our further investment in Washington demonstrates our continued commitment to developing innovative technology and lean facilities, which will improve performance and drive profitability for our business.”

David Ayton, Rolls-Royce, Executive Vice President for the Rotatives Supply Chain Unit, added: “Our exceptional people engineer and make extraordinary components. This showcase facility gives us the opportunity to set new standards of excellence for quality, delivery and cost.”

The new Washington facility is part of Rolls-Royce’s ongoing investment in improving its UK infrastructure. Employees from the existing Sunderland facility will start to move into the new site from 2017 and the Sunderland site is scheduled for closure in 2019.

There are two types of disc manufactured in Washington: fan discs and turbine discs. Located at the front of the engine, the fan disc holds the fan blades, which can rotate at up to 2,700 times per minute and move over a tonne of air per second, the equivalent of the volume of air in a squash court, in the largest Civil Aerospace engines. Turbine discs hold blades in the hottest part of the engine where the operating conditions are at their most severe. The disc is made of some of the strongest materials available, created using refined powders which are specially processed and machined to the accuracy of a fraction of the thickness of a human hair.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

  1. Rolls-Royce’s vision is to be the market-leader in high performance power systems where our engineering expertise, global reach and deep industry knowledge deliver outstanding customer relationships and solutions. We operate across five businesses: Civil Aerospace, Defence Aerospace, Marine, Nuclear and Power Systems.
  2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 120 countries, comprising more than 380 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
  3. Annual underlying revenue was £14.6 billion in 2014, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £76.5 billion at 30 June 2015.
  4. In 2014, Rolls-Royce invested £1.2 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
  5. Rolls-Royce employs over 54,000 people in more than 50 countries. Over 15,500 of these are engineers.
  6. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2014 we employed 354 graduates and 357 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes. Globally we have over 1,000 Rolls-Royce STEM ambassadors who are actively involved in education programmes and activities; we have set ourselves a target to reach 6 million people through our STEM outreach activities by 2020.