Rolls Royce and HAL ink deal to manufacture Made-in-India ‘Adour Engine’ parts
“Rolls-Royce believes we can be an able partner to build an engine in India for AMCA. It goes in line with the indigenous design and manufacturing initiative that India wants and the atmanirbhar way,” remarks Kishore Jayaraman, head of Rolls-Royce in South Asia.
Though India’s economy has been hard hit by the pandemic, signs of economic revival are already evident in India and this recent development can be added to India’s story of a strong economic revival.
On Tuesday, Rolls-Royce, world’s leading British aerospace company, and HAL have inked a deal to manufacture “Adour Engine” parts for their country’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft programme, called AMCA (Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft), under India’s ‘Make in India’ initiative.
The agreement was exchanged between Mr. B Krishna Kumar, Executive Director (Engine & IMGT), HAL and Mr. Abhishek Singh, Senior Vice President – Defence, India and South East Asia, Rolls-Royce.
The manufactured parts for Rolls-Royce’s Adour engines will support the UK-headquartered company’s international defence customer base and the variants of the Adour engine power the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Jaguar fighters as well as its fleet of Hawk advanced jet trainers (AJT).
Moreover, Rolls-Royce now aims to strengthen the ecosystem for Adour engines in India, with HAL’s existing capabilities for manufacturing and support for the Jet engines. This partnerships seals India’s position as the party of global supply chain for Adour engine parts.
Chairman and Managing Director (CMD),R Madhavan said,”With over 30 years’ experience of supporting repair and maintenance services for the Adour engines in India, HAL has the capability and capacity to support a large defence customer base. This is the first order for supply of spares for the Adour Global Supply chain. We plan to be a key player in the supply chain of Adour engines and expect more orders to follow. We look forward to working with Rolls-Royce to build on this capability to serve global markets for supply of spares and MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) of Adour engines.”
Kishore Jayaraman, who heads Rolls-Royce in South Asia, said: “We are going to supply through multiple companies. HAL is only the first supplier we have signed a contract with, but we are looking at an entire supply chain ecosystem,” he said. “We are close to completing our discussions with a couple of other Indian companies. Over the next few weeks, we should be signing contracts with them as well,” he added.
“Rolls-Royce believes we can be an able partner to build an engine in India for AMCA. That is the area of the future. To co-create, co-develop and co-manufacture. It goes in line with the indigenous design and manufacturing initiative that India wants and the atmanirbhar way,” said Jayaraman.
“(Our) keenness is on the co-creation concept. Because at the end of the day, when we co-create, we are generating IP and the IP is generated locally. When a product is designed in India, manufactured in India, you create your supply chain and you create services concept. It creates a whole new ecosystem in the Indian aerospace sector,” he said.
Jayaraman added that Rolls-Royce believes it can create and manufacture the right engine along with the relevant agencies in India.
