Spirit descends on Shannon

US company Spirit AeroSystems has opened a new sales office in Shannon, to service customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Paul McInerney is regional sales director with the company and said its arrival offers an opportunity for manufacturing companies in the Mid-West.
“This company has never ventured into Ireland before now. At the moment, we have two people here and we’ll see how it progresses. There’s definitely potential for creating more jobs here but it won’t happen overnight and we’ll see how it progresses over time. Where there would be the potential for work to be created, is in manufacturing. We subcontract a lot of work and we have been in contact with Shannon Development because we’re hoping to get companies to feed off us. We’re hoping companies will be looking for work from us.”
He said a lot of the parts the company sells to airlines are made by subcontractors. Mr McInerney said that Boeing manufacturing approval is required from companies it buys parts from and there would be opportunities for local firms. “There’s no doubt companies could make a lot of parts if they want to. We are constantly looking for operators.”
Based in Kansas, Spirit AeroSystems is the world’s largest independent supplier of commercial airplane assemblies and components. As well as the US, it has locations in England, Scotland, Malaysia and France.
“We continue to work on strengthening our relationships globally and opening offices in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region positions us closer to our customers,” said company spokeswoman Carolyn Harms. “We want to give our customers easy access to our team when they have emergent requests. Our customers have expressed their desire to have regional support and Spirit is filling this need.
“After announcing plans last year to work directly with international customers on sales and distribution of spare parts, we believe that the global expansion of our sales force takes Spirit another step closer towards the execution of our aftermarket growth strategy and long term value creation for our international customers,” she said.