Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3

Mike Judd, European Editor, Circuitnet

Here is my final report on the week long Airshow, before the weekend sees the show open to the public.

Firstly the overall view.

Matthew Knowles, Communications Manager of SBAC, The Society of British Aerospace Companies, told me he was pleasantly surprised by the level of orders received at the show.

He kindly allows me to share this final summing up:

Industry and Government hail success of Farnborough Air Show

The Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) have today hailed the success of the 2008 Farnborough International Airshow.

The Airshow has defied the gloomy predictions about orders and has given the global aerospace and defence industry the opportunity to see the best of British-based manufacturing and engineering at first hand. List price orders for Boeing and Airbus alone have topped the US$50 billion mark this week at Farnborough.

Lord Digby Jones said:

“I am very pleased that Farnborough 2008 has been such a success and that UKTI Defence and Security Organisation collaborated with the SBAC to bring military and government delegations from over 38 countries to this important exhibition. I would like to thank the SBAC and its subsidiary Farnborough International Limited for organising this event and would also like to acknowledge the important role played by the companies in making Farnborough the prominent global air show.”

Ian Godden, SBAC Chief Executive, said:

“The Farnborough Airshow has once again been the ideal location to show off UK-based manufacturing and engineering excellence in both the aerospace and defence sectors. Orders have been strong and have demonstrated that there is still life in the civil air transport market despite the current global economic situation. Interest in defence has also been at its usual high levels.

“My colleagues at our subsidiary Farnborough International Limited have excelled themselves in putting on an outstanding event with exhibitor numbers up five percent on 2006. I thank them for their efforts. I would also like to thank UKTI and DSO for their support in our activities during the Airshow and in particular, for facilitating the business meetings that we have hosted jointly this week.”

I visited some booths and pavilions at random on the final trade day, to try and assess how successful the show had been for exhibitors.

These are some of the responses from those I talked to:

Stephen Bethel, Head of Communications - West, BAE Systems based at the Farnborough Aerospace Centre, Farnborough.

I spoke to Stephen inside the BAE Pavilion.

“Yes we do have a heavy presence at the show. It has been a great show and we have been very busy all week. We have had delegations from all over the world and we definitely expect to see some business as a result.

In my experience compared to past shows, we have been as busy as we have ever been and my impression is this has been across the board. Regarding the economic climate, we have a strong order book and we are confident of some good business as a result of Farnborough this year. Although we are a global company, Farnborough is our home show, it is where we are headquartered, so this is an important big show for us.”

Dave Gardner, UK Sales Manager, Aerospace, Defence & Marine, Tyco Electronics, Swindon.

“We’ve had a good show and some excellent meetings on the stand with pre-arranged customers. Monday was the only day just a little quiet. We have not exhibited here for some time, but we decided this year we would go with it. We have a new stand format that has worked very well. The show has been very successful, we have taken a lot of leads from customers, lots we knew already, but also new leads.

Although they are predominantly from UK, we have had some people in from other countries including Japan. The feedback from my colleagues who have been here all week say it’s a wide audience.

Yes we would come next time (to the show), that would be my recommendation to my management.

“I agree our products are wide ranging, we have four main product types , relays & contactors, connectors, wiring cables and interconnect, and our heat shrink range of products-bonding parts, tubing etc. On top of that we have the system integration capability-skills manufacturing of added value products. Obviously these are tailored for the aerospace industry here, but visitors have been interested across the board, in everything we offer.

“Tyco Electronics is almost a 14 billion dollar company with nearly a quarter of a million employees across the world in 100 locations, where we are either manufacturing or where we have some sort of presence. We have manufacturing plants (13) in China, in India, Czech Republic, UK and the USA, where our headquarters are located.”

Yosuke Miura, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation

“We are exhibiting within the area of the Japanese Aerospace companies, where we are working together for our customers. Big companies are coming to our joint booth looking at our products which is very nice.

Yes it has been successful, we have made good contacts and we hope to get good business from them. We are happy.”

Richard Martin, Chairman, Kembrey Wiring Systems, Greenbridge, Wiltshire.

“How has the week been for us? Excellent! We had a great response to all the invitations we sent out to would be customers. There have been lots of people on the booth and the good news is that we have had real quality discussions at the meetings. We have been very pleased, it’s certainly been the most successful Farnborough for us so far. The opportunities we have had to talk to visitors who come on the stand have been good selling opportunities. So I think our Sales Manager will be rather busy when he gets back to the office.

We have a specific order we are hoping to convert here this week but I would have to kill you if I told you about it! It is a defence contract, close to signature.”

Iain J Smith & Chris Wiseman, TWI Ltd, Cambridge.

“It has been a very interesting show for us finding out what is going on inside our customers area and we have also managed to gain plenty of leads to follow up. We have also met with some existing customers which is a great way of liaising with them. We have been at this show now three or four times, it seems to get bigger each time and more useful for us.

“Our interest in this show is that we are involved with joining materials together so its vital that every part of the operation, whether it is avionics, airframes, propulsion units, rockets, satellites and the rest, hence its important to be here. So it’s a very wide ranging, different technology that we are talking about. We are developing some of the latest technologies that are going into new projects, but they are unseen because they are enabling customers to make their superior projects.

We have about five hundred highly qualified scientists and engineers with a customer base of over 3500 companies worldwide. We have a network worldwide and sixteen of the top twenty two aerospace companies by turnover are members of TWI.”

Dr Andy Curley, Technology Transfer Facilitator, Kingston University.

Located on the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium booth, a business-winning trade association located in the heart of the UK’s aerospace business.

“What I have heard from my colleagues from this week is that there has been great interest at the show. It’s fascinating to see so many different perspectives of the aerospace industry. We have had a lot of interest in the University itself and the aircraft engineering/aerospace type courses that we offer, it’s been a great success. Avionics is a very strong electronics link with things like controls, communications and new electronics devices, so we have great interest being at this show. We are also looking at state-of-the-art devices that are upcoming on aircraft.”

It’s been a delight to be at The Farnborough Airshow for Circuitnet and its readers.