Airbus meets with Ohio suppliers
cincinnati.com – KETTERING, Ohio – An overflow crowd of 350 manufacturing executives from across Ohio, including more than dozen from Greater Cincinnati, came here Tuesday to pitch their expertise and capabilities to European aircraft maker Airbus.
Allan McArtor, Airbus Americas chairman, said his company was more than willing to listen.
“We’re here because we like what you do,” the former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot told the large and small manufacturers at the daylong procurement summit at the National Composite Center in this Dayton suburb.
Airbus, which produces military and commercial aircraft, does more business in Ohio than any other state. It annual purchases of aerospace parts and other services is more than $4 billion, or 40 percent of the $10 billion it spends in the United States annually.
“This is all about creating jobs,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who joined with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland in emphasizing building on the state’s aerospace heritage which dates to Dayton’s Wright Brothers.
“Ohioans don’t know how big the aerospace business is in the state,” said Brown, who helped organize the event here and an earlier Airbus supplier event in Cleveland in December which drew about 200 manufacturers.
