CEO of Gardner Aerospace, Dominic Cartwright, spoke at Backing Britain Live 2020 about the current state of the aerospace sector, overcoming industry challenges at Gardener and the UK supply chain. Whilst the industry has faced some challenges, due to travel restrictions and lockdown over the course of the pandemic, leaders are still optimistic for the future of aerospace.
Many attendees were fully engaged as questions were raised regularly during the event. This mainly focused on the company’s plans to invest post-pandemic. Dominic mentioned that the firm does plan to invest and that 2019 saw their biggest investments to date. This included investing in automated machining processes.
Dominic started his presentation with some insight into what Gardner Aerospace is all about. Gardner’s ethos is “One Philosophy, One Purpose, One Partner” and see themselves as partners to their customers who offer local support with a global capability.
They manufacture and supply detailed part products to the aerospace industry, with their main partner being Airbus. Their core services are sheet metal, machining and surface treatments. Dominic said:
“We manufacture parts for up and down the aircraft, this can range from part sizes of 1 cm to 26 metres. Therefore we have a pretty extensive capability.”
Talking about growth in the sector, Dominic questioned: “what really drives growth in Aerospace?” Over the last 50 years, the industry has seen a constant incline as demand for travel increases. In fact, Dominic pointed out that every “15 years the number of people travelling doubles.”
Proving a positive outlook for the future, the graph presented other large scale incidents that also affected the sector such as SARS in 2003 and the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2000, which still had little effect on the demand for aerospace components. Though not always massive growth, steady growth was still prominent.
However, the restrictions in mobility at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic saw that the levels in demand dropped almost to a complete halt. Speaking in honesty, Dominic added: “We became miles away from where we thought we were going to be due to the pandemic, in aerospace we have not faced this kind of challenge before.”
After the announcement of the lockdown, Gardner Aerospace turned their attention to their short term cash position and securing shareholder support was crucial to their survival.
In his final comments for the event, Dominic summarised:
“The supply chain is synchronizing and resetting and it will take a while before demand is back to normal. However, innovation comes quickly when there is a deadline and we must proceed so we know that we can create rapid solutions”
Watch Dominic’s speech here. Also, join us tomorrow on backingbritain.com for our keynote event with Stephen Loftus from Brompton Bike at 12 pm.