Causeway Aero’s unique modular aircraft galley
Causeway Aero is taking its modular approach to business collaboration and applying it to designing aircraft interiors and galleys too. We talked to Causeway Aero’s Paul Shields.
Causeway Aero is…
Causeway Aero is taking its modular approach to business collaboration and applying it to designing aircraft interiors and galleys too. We talked to Causeway Aero’s Paul Shields.
Causeway Aero is made up of five Northern Ireland aerospace companies who have come together to offer combined capabilities to the aerospace sector. The idea is that this enables larger and more complex design and manufacture work packages to be undertaken.
The participating companies are:
- Base – Aero structures design
- Denroy – Injection moulded plastics
- Dontaur – Metal finishing
- Moyola – Precision engineering
- Hutchinson Aerotech – Sheet metal fabrication
Each company has unique skills in the aerospace market and they combine to offer a new organisation with the capability of designing and manufacturing aerospace structures.
One area the company is specialising in is interiors, particularly galleys, having identified these as “a bit of a thorn in the flesh” in the MRO and OEM markets.
Shields said: “Galleys are frequently difficult to build from a cycle time point of view and from an assembly point of view, and what we’ve tried to do is use a new modular system to build [a] demonstrator galley.”
They showed this galley at the recent MRO Europe event in London, although it is not available to airlines yet.
Shields explained the benefits of this modular approach: “We can produce this galley at a much lower cycle time than the traditional galley manufacturing cycle. I’m not going to say too much about what that involve because I don’t want to give away the game, but a much, much lower cycle time. And potentially for the lower cycle time, you have a lower assembly cost, and potentially, a cheaper galley as well.”
He added: “We have put together a very detailed business plan for Causeway Aero Interiors Division, and galleys would be a predominant part of that division. So, this is really to gauge and see how good a business plan that is in terms of what the market thinks.”
