GKN Aerospace receives Airbus supplier awards

Three GKN Aerospace aerostructures operations, in Bristol and Cowes in the UK and Munich in Germany, received the SQIP (supply chain and quality improvement) awards from Airbus.

The Filton site achieved ‘Accredited Supplier’ status for the second year running and has now been an award winner for four consecutive years while the Cowes site gained the ‘Best Performing Supplier’ award and the Munich site gained ‘Best Improved Supplier.’

John Pritchard, CEO of GKN Aerospace - Aerostructures Europe commented: “Working closely with Airbus, we have implemented the SQIP program within the company and with all our suppliers. As a result we have all achieved - and continue to realize - real performance benefits. SQIP provides an effective structure within which we can work together to explore, identify and implement solutions and to refine the practices we use to benchmark our activities. We are proud to have the effort and commitment of our teams at these sites - and the excellent levels of performance they have achieved - recognized by Airbus with these SQIP awards."

Across its international operation, the company has been an important supplier to Airbus for well over two decades, with sales to Airbus representing around a fifth of the total GBP 2.5bn annual sales. GKN Aerospace supports almost all Airbus aircraft programs with products ranging from advanced composite and metallic airframe and engine structures to high-performance cockpit and cabin transparencies.