600 jobs in the pipelline at Shorts

THE embattled aerospace company Shorts will create up to 600 jobs with the announcement by its parent company Bombardier of plans to build a new jet aircraft.

It is a major boost for the Belfast company which last year had to let 1,000 employees go through redundancy and early retirement because of the collapse of the Dutch plane maker Fokker.

Full details of the scale and value of the investment for the 70 seater CRJ X jet will be released next month but it could take up to four years before all the Belfast jobs are in place.

Shorts are still delighted with the announcement. "This is excellent news for Shorts," said Mr Ken Brundle, the company's vice president and general manager of operations. "It will mean the creation of several hundred jobs in Belfast over the next few years. The CRJ X is the sixth Bombardier aircraft programme in which Shorts is playing a major role. These programmes are of great significance to the company and to the Northern Ireland economy.

The new aircraft is described as an extended version of the 50 seater Canadair regional jet. The two types of plane are the only 50 and 70 seater jets on offer to the world's airlines and Shorts are already major manufacturers for the 50 seater version.

Initially a small team will be involved in the design stage, with more being created in the early production stage which is expected to be about two years down the road. Full production on the jet is expected to be in place by the turn of the century.

Shorts which now employs 6,000 people have the contract to design and manufacture the forward and centre fuselage of the plane. Shorts is also in partnership with General Electric.

Shorts has begun a slow recovery from the devastating collapse of Fokker and last months began recruiting 120 employees for extensions to its existing aircraft manufacturing programmes. The Dutch plane maker accounted for close to 30 per cent of Shorts' 1995 profit of £29.2 million. The Belfast firm had been manufacturing wing sets for the Fokker 70 and Fokker 100 jets prior to its demise in March last year.

Bombardier, the Montreal based Canadian corporation employs 40,000 people worldwide including those at Shorts. Bombardier took over Shorts in 1989 and since then has invested £200 million into upgrading the Belfast plant.

The aerospace division of the corporation comprises Canadair, Learjet, de Havilland and Shorts and is the fourth largest manufacturer of civil aircraft in the world. It has extensive involvement in transportation equipment, aerospace and motorised consumer products.

In 1995 Bombardier had a turnover of Can$7.1 billion, just under £3.5 billion and more than 85 per cent of that was generated in markets outside Canada.