Around $14 million is set aside for Dayton-area GE Aerospace facilities, including production sites in Vandalia and Beavercreek and the EPISCenter on the University of Dayton campus. The money will be mainly for equipment and focusing on day-to-day production, said Nick Hurm, a GE Aerospace spokesman.
There are about 40 hourly and salaried company job openings in the Dayton area at the moment, he said.
The company has been working to put an industry-wide slow-down behind it. Last month, GE Aerospace announced a “record-breaking” Air India order of hundreds of GE and CFM International engines, including over 800 LEAP engines, 40 GEnx-1B, and 20 GE9X engines, with long-term service contracts, GE said at the time.
That order was said to be the biggest-ever deal in commercial aircraft history.
“We’re progressing well to become a standalone business next year,” Hurm said. “It’s just a lot of momentum.”
GE Aerospace and GE Vernova are on track to become standalone public companies in early 2024.
GE Aerospace and the GE-Baker Hughes joint venture’s Aero Engine Operation (AEO) will invest more than $17 million in the company’s Evendale operations near Cincinnati, the company also said.
AEO’s investments are intended to improve capacity for test facility operations and assembly across several programs.
Nationwide, GE Aerospace expects to invest more than $335 million in U.S. facilities this year. Today, the Aerospace segment has more than 800 external job postings open in sites nationwide.
GE Aerospace has long been a major employer in Southwestern Ohio. Pre-pandemic, the company had about 1,500 employees working in what were then four Dayton-area facilities.
With its new Beavercreek facility in the Miami Valley Research Park, GE Unison consolidated operations in what had been four buildings.
Before COVID, the company had about 300 employees at its University of Dayton-based EPISCenter alone. And based in Butler County’s West Chester Twp. is CFM International, a joint venture of GE and French company Snecma.
About 9,000 Ohioans work for the company.
The company is also one of the biggest suppliers to military aviation, with a strong connection to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the heart of Air Force logistics and research work.
GE continues work on its XA100 engine for the F-35 fighter jet, intending to meet U.S. Air Force goals for the Adaptive Engine Transition Program. GE says the new engine offers 25% better fuel efficiency, 10% more thrust and more power and thermal management capacity than current engines.
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