Thank you.
Mr. Chair,
ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to be here today to participate with the Standing Committee on National Defence and to make a presentation on behalf of Composites Atlantic Limited.
Composites Atlantic Limited was established in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1987 to supply launching canisters to the ADATS program, the air defense anti-tank system contract. The company was created with the support of ACOA and the Province of Nova Scotia.
The company is owned by Sogerma, EADS Group, and the Province of Nova Scotia today, 50% each. It does state-of-the-art manufacturing of advanced composites. We address the world market and we're involved with all the OEMs of this world: Airbus, Augusta Westland, ATR, Boeing, Bombardier, de Havilland, Embraer, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Dassault Falcon, Learjet, Cessna, MDA and the Canadian Space Agency, Short Brothers, and many small companies as well.
The company was started from ground zero. The building was erected in 12 months in 1988, manufacturing started in 1989, and the first parts were delivered at the end of the year. Since then the company has continued to grow and create both direct and many indirect jobs in the community. We are presently certified to the highest standard to manufacture advanced composites for defence, aeronautic, and commercial products. As a matter of fact, we are the largest company to produce advanced composites outside of the OEMs. In Canada we are the largest manufacturer.
We have offices in Kent, Washington, to address our customer Boeing and the west coast market. We have an office in Mirabel, Quebec, for engineering expertise and design and manufacturing of fibre placement parts in collaboration with the National Research Council. We also have representatives in Wichita, Kansas, and São Paulo, Brazil, and of course with Airbus and the people in Europe, in France and Germany.
The main plant is located in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. We produce complex geometric parts using 24 different technologies under the same roof, giving great potential in the market to develop and produce better engineering products with better added value.
From our plant located in Lunenburg we have developed local suppliers: carpentry work for containers going worldwide to ship our products; transportation to go anywhere in North America, based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; a mechanical and machining company; sheet metal work; computer suppliers and software. For the past 20 years, over 100 indirect jobs are continuing to serve Composites Atlantic on a daily basis.
Today, Composites Atlantic employs 250 people with an annual revenue of C$42 million. Before the worldwide economic collapse we were close to 500 employees, with annual revenues of $50 million-plus. With the joint strike fighter and the Boeing 787, we will ramp up over 700 jobs over the next three to four years.
Concerning the joint strike fighter program, Composites Atlantic has been able to participate as a result of the government's long-term planning in the joint strike fighter F-35 program. This year, in 2010, we created ten jobs for the joint strike fighter for Northrop Grumman, for the U.S. portion of the contract. We are very pleased to start producing joint strike fighter advanced composite parts.
In the next ten years, if we had all the present orders we have and the next orders we are preparing our organization for, we would create 100 jobs in Nova Scotia, which would represent $71 million for the next ten years. In the next ten years after that, we will maintain those 100 jobs and will have a total of $167 million in contracts.
This will represent for the Lunenburg area, which is a small locality in Nova Scotia, over 1,600 jobs for the next 20 years.
We are supporting the program, which will bring added value to our company as well as advanced technology—as you all know, the joint strike fighter is definitely an advanced product—and long-term employment stability in a rural area to those who need more work to stay close to their families.
If it is possible, I would like to make a suggestion to this committee. If it is feasible for you, I will recommend that you come to visit us in Nova Scotia, and we will show you the chain of suppliers we have established in the Atlantic region—we would like very much to do that—including a training program which we have developed as well, from Lunenburg, from Composites Atlantic. This training program for composite technicians is being taught on a daily basis in the community to develop our business in the future and also our local suppliers.
I give my thanks to this committee for giving me the opportunity to be here today on behalf of my company and my staff to present our future with the joint strike fighter.
Thank you very much.