It doesn’t take long for Katherine Bennett’s frustration to boil over when the issue of Brexit is raised. “It’s not as easy as Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks,” said the boss of Airbus UK. “We don’t just export cheese or cider to another country.

“We have parts that go back and forth to different countries to be worked on – sometimes several times. That is why frictionless borders are important.”

Airbus has been at the centre of a political storm since it warned last month that it could quit the UK if it leaves the EU single market and customs union without a transition deal.

The pan-European aerospace giant is one of Britain’s biggest manufacturers, employing 14,000 people at 25 sites, including 6,000 at Broughton in north Wales. It also supports more than 100,000 jobs in the wider supply chain and spent £5bn with more than 4,000 UK suppliers last year.

The Broughton plant builds the wings for all Airbus planes and is seen as being most vulnerable to a hard Brexit because components could be held up at the border.

Airbus’s warning drew howls of protest from Brexiter politicians, who accused it of being selfish and not acting in the country’s best interests.

In Pegasus House, a restored art deco building at Airbus’s plant in Filton, Bristol, Bennett said: “I’m not sure that speaking up for your business is selfish. It’s just making business sense.

“Brexit is such a huge economic and political issue that Airbus couldn’t stand on the sidelines. There was a lack of clarity on what the government was proposing.”

Since then, the government has thrashed out its position on Brexit, detailed in last week’s white paper. The proposals offer manufacturers some comfort in a few key areas.

It wants to establish a free trade area that would remove the need for customs checks and controls between the UK and the EU – as if in a combined customs territory – while enabling the UK to control tariffs for its own trade with the rest of the world.

It also suggests that EU citizens could come to the UK without visas to do “paid work in limited and clearly defined circumstances”.

Bennett said: “We are cautiously optimistic about the Chequers agreement and white paper. It is a step in the right direction.” But she added that clarity on the future trading relationship between Britain and the EU was essential for businesses to be able to plan.

Derek Butler, 72, who worked at the wing production plant for more than 20 years, said it would be devastating for the area if Airbus were to close Broughton and move work elsewhere.

Now a councillor with the local Flintshire authority, he said: “These things go down overnight and take generations to build back. It is absolutely a national issue.”

Butler, who voted Remain, believes the likes of Airbus, Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens and Nissan should have spelled out the Brexit risks to their UK businesses a lot sooner: “The big players are only now walking out to the wicket.”

Bennett said that because of the manufacturer’s internal market, Airbus in the UK already has to compete with other locations in the group for work on future programmes: “My counterpart in Berlin tells me that he is constantly being asked by German politicians and staff, ‘Is this an opportunity to get more work for Hamburg?’ But Airbus is saying that if the work goes anywhere, it won’t be in the EU; it will go to China.”

Since it raised its concerns about Britain quitting the EU, Airbus has been approached by at least seven governments looking to poach future wing production work. The group is currently assessing plans for its next A320 single-aisle plane. It has been courted by France, Germany and Spain, as well as the US and China – where it has assembly lines – and even Mexico and South Korea.

Airbus may have an opportunity to select a new wing-assembly hub for the A320 programme. Plans for the next generation of this family of narrow-body planes call for lightweight, all-composite wings in a drive to cut fuel consumption by 30%. The group’s Spanish operation has invested a lot in composite manufacturing, Bennett said, so it is “quite well-placed to bid for more work”.

She also shot down claims from some Brexiters that Airbus would never send work to China. “We already have a final assembly line for the A320 in Tianjin, and they also do wings there,” she noted. “It makes four A320s a month at the moment and that may go up. So that’s one site the wing work could go to.”

A tour of the Filton plant reveals why it is important for Britain to retain its status as Airbus’s centre of excellence for wing design and production. The wings that are eventually built at Broughton are all designed at Filton. The wings are the most complex bit of the giant aircraft jigsaw.

Anthony Meisner is one of a team designing the “wing of the future” for Airbus planes, with the aid of a 3D software package. He dims the lights in Filton’s virtual reality suite and brings up a crystal-clear 3D image of an aircraft wing on a giant screen.

The image can be accessed from 25 similar suites across the group’s sites, allowing design engineers and heads of manufacturing from Germany, France, Spain and the UK to view the same image and discuss any potential design flaws long before they create an issue on the assembly line.

Meisner, who has worked on the project for 18 months, said: “This allows us to be around the same component, even though we are in different rooms.”

With a few clicks of a console he manipulates the image, pulling off panels and zooming in for a detailed look at the smallest components inside the wing, then pans out to reveal another intriguing new feature.

“We’re developing a folding wing tip,” he said. “On a single-aisle jet like the A320, this gives a longer wing and is more aerodynamic, but it will also fit into the airport gate when folded.”

The current wing span for an A320 is 36 metres; Airbus is considering a span of between 40 and 44 metres for the folding wing.

Mark Howard, head of research and technology business development at Airbus UK, noted that the group is introducing more automation with each aircraft programme. He also reckons the new wing will create drag improvements of 12%.

“So that’s pretty important because that means less fuel burn,” he said. “It means that you don’t need as much thrust to push it through the air, which means you can reduce engine weight. It’s a snowball effect in terms of aircraft design.”

When the future wing goes into production – which will be within the next 10 years – Airbus will have to make a huge investment to automate large parts of the manufacturing and assembly process. These big investment decisions could be make-or-break ones for Broughton – and for Britain’s place at the top table of the aerospace industry.

“Proposals are being put on our table for investment all the time. But there is no guarantee that the next wing or product will come to us,” Bennett warned. “If Airbus decides it wants to turn the tap off, it will. Our investments are in a holding pattern at the moment.”

By: DocMemory
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