Stelia Aerospace has inaugurated a new €70m “factory of the future”, on its site in Méaulte, Northern France. Méaulte is the company’s largest site, employing 1,600 people — one-third of its workforce in France.

The factory, specializing in aerostructures, mainly for the front fuselages of Airbus aircraft and the central fuselage for Bombardier’s Global 7000, is now claimed to be one of the most modern plants in Europe.

The site has been extended to 1.2 million sq. feet (115,000 sq. meters) of production floor area, and is equipped with new leading-edge tools: more than 35 robots and automatic riveting machines as well as three moving production lines, moving at the rate of 1 in/min, dedicated to the A320 family, and enabling the delivery of 15 front fuselages per week.

The facilities also include new digital tools based for example on augmented reality and digital mock-ups.

Stelia Aerospace is a subsidiary of Airbus formed in 2015 by combining the former Aerolia with the aircarft seating business of Sogerma. It designs and manufactures the front fuselage sections for the entire Airbus family, as well as fuselage sections and specific sub-assemblies for Airbus, fully equipped wings for ATR, fully equipped central fuselages for Bombardier’s Global 7000, and complex metallic and composite aerostructure parts for a variety of other programmes.