After months of negotiations and several warning strikes, Airbus and the IG Metall trade union have agreed on a new industrial structure for aircraft construction in Germany. IG Metall agreed to the establishment of a new, greatly enlarged Airbus subsidiary, which is to build fuselage sections in the future. The four plants of the previous Airbus offshoot Premium Aerotec in Augsburg and in Varel could be sold to the automotive supplier Muhr and Bender (Mubea). Airbus and IG Metall want to make the decision together after negotiations with Mubea in the next few weeks.
With the agreement, Airbus is finally completing a strategic U-turn of 180 degrees. For years, the group had tried to sell the subsidiaries Premium Aerotec in Germany and Stelia Aerospace in France, whose main task is to manufacture fuselage sections for civil aircraft. Airbus wanted to follow the example set by Boeing. The competitor had already sold the former US plant in Wichita in 2005. The fuselages of the 737 family are still built there under the Spirit Aerosystems brand.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, after the sale had repeatedly failed, said that structural components were back to the core business – also with a view to future aircraft models, in which the integration of fuselage, engines and wings is particularly important. Stelia in France has been merged with some Airbus plants and has been trading as Airbus Atlantic since early 2022. In Germany, the procedure was delayed because of the dispute with the union.
Airbus in Germany will consist of two large companies in the future. Airbus Operations GmbH, based in Hamburg, is primarily responsible for the final assembly of the aircraft and will employ around 12,000 people after the conversion, which is scheduled to be completed by July 1st. The new subsidiary for the aircraft structure will initially consist of parts of the current Airbus plant in Hamburg and the Lower Saxony site in Nordenham and will employ around 10,000 people.
Mubea, the potential customer, is an automotive supplier based in Attendorn/North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2020, the company had sales of almost 2.1 billion euros and employed 14,000 people. Mubea wants to take over all plants of the previous Premium Aerotec in Augsburg and in Varel with around 3000 employees and would thus become one of the largest European suppliers in the aviation industry in one fell swoop.
The sale of the sites was the most contentious point between Airbus and IG Metall in recent months – the union initially wanted to prevent it entirely. Now the two want to find out together and decide whether Mubea or Airbus themselves offer better prospects. Should the negotiations with Mubea fail, Augsburg and Varel would remain as separate units at Airbus until 2025 and would be “competitively positioned” until then, as stated in a statement. Airbus has ruled out redundancies for all Group locations by 2030.