GREENSBORO, NC– Last week, Honda Aircraft Co. broke ground on its 82,000-square-foot building here–a $15.5 million expansion to the company’s Research and Development campus at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTI). The new building will serve as a location for Honda to increase production of its low-wing HondaJet, a light business jet that seats seven with speeds of up to 486 mph and a range of more than 1,400 miles.
This development will bring Honda’s total investment at PTI to $245 million. Internationally, there are 130 of these HondaJets in service, and all are manufactured in Greensboro.
Home to 200 aerospace companies and 400 suppliers, North Carolina has the second-fastest growing aerospace business cluster in the country. This Greensboro-High Point region (Guilford County) includes several key players in the aerospace industry:
> HondaJet employs 1,700 people, many of them engineers. In 2007, the company announced it would establish its world headquarters and production facility in Greensboro to manufacture its advanced light jet.
>Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO) is the leading third-party maintenance, repair and overhaul service provider in the world, HAECO services airplanes from various airlines. The HAECO Americas Headquarters in Greensboro employs 1,600, and its 250,000-square-foot hangar is a $60 million investment and the largest hangar space amongst HAECO America’s facilities.
>Aerospace business Textron Aviation handles a wide range of service issues for Hawker aircrafts and the company’s own high-performing aircraft products, Beechcraft and Cessna, through its award-winning Greensboro Service Center.
>Bridgestone Corp., the largest tire and rubber company in the world, opened an aircraft tire retread plant in Greensboro over a decade ago, servicing Boeing and other aerospace companies in the region.