Russian Helicopters and AgustaWestland is establishing an AW139 final assembly plant at Tomilino, near Moscow, to satisfy Russian and CIS civil helicopter markets.
“Russian Helicopters is increasing its presence on foreign markets, delivering Russian rotorcraft to foreign customers and opening service centres,” said Russian Helicopters COO Andrei Shibitov during a ground-breaking ceremony on June 22 to mark the commencement of construction of the new site. “In this respect we are greatly interested in the foreign experience of organising, managing, planning, certificating production processes, and know-how in managing the entire life cycle of a product. We are set to gain maximum benefit from joint work with the Italian partners. Russian Helicopters will strengthen Russia’s commercial positions on the international helicopter market.”
The 40,000m2 final assembly plant will be run by HeliVert, a Russian Helicopters and AgustaWestland equal joint venture, which expects to be assembling in excess of 20 helicopters per year from 2015.
“It gives us great pleasure to be here with our Russian partners both concretely and symbolically laying the foundations of what we are confident will be a bright future of industrial cooperation based on the world best selling AW139,” said Giuseppe Orsi, CEO of AgustaWestland. “This model has been identified and selected by the Russian industry as the benchmark helicopter in its category to meet a variety of demanding requirements in the Russian and CIS civil markets.”
Over 120 customers from almost 50 countries have ordered almost 450 AW139s so far. AgustaWestland delivered its 300th AW139 to the Italian coast guard on May 25.
