SC plant opens to build 787 fuselages

The dream of an aeronautics industry in South Carolina became reality Thursday with the ribbon cutting for a mammoth Vought Aircraft Industries plant to build fuselages for Boeing Co.’s new 787 Dreamliner.

Gov. Mark Sanford told hundreds inside the cavernous 342,000-square-foot building that the day was about dreams – both the Dreamliner and the dreams of South Carolinians who will be able to find good jobs in the aeronautics industry.

The plant is part of a $560 million aeronautics complex near the Charleston International Airport that company officials say will eventually employ around 725 workers at wages of $40,000 a year and higher.

Sanford said it is the second-largest single industrial investment in South Carolina since BMW built its auto manufacturing plant in Greer in the early 1990s.

“What this announcement is ultimately about is the culmination of a whole bunch of dreams on behalf of a lot of different folks,” Sanford said. “You can’t compete with the rest of the world unless you leverage human capacity.”

The technology used in making the new airplanes leverages the ability of South Carolina workers to compete in the global market. “What they have done here is produce a better mouse trap,” he said.

Much of the new fuselages will be built of composite material, which is lighter than aluminum – so planes will be more fuel-efficient – and requires fewer parts to bolt together.

In making the components, an autoclave – a sort of pressure cooker to cure the composites – is used.

The autoclave at the new plant is 30 feet in diameter and 75 feet deep and is the largest autoclave by volume in the world, said Mark Dickey, the plant’s general manager.

Vought will build the rear fuselage assemblies in the new plant.

The center sections will be manufactured in Italy, then brought to North Charleston where they will be joined with the rear sections at a similar-size plant next door being built jointly by Vought and Alenia North America Inc.

That assembly plant opens later this year with the first deliveries to Boeing expected in early 2007.

In all, about 60 percent of the Dreamliner fuselages will be assembled in North Charleston, then shipped to the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash., for final assembly.

With the new plant “Charleston County puts itself in the center of the aviation universe,” said Leon Stravinakis, chairman of the County Council. “Charleston is going to be a key player in the new era of aviation.”

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said that in the end, industrial announcements are about people.

“The goal of economic development is to establish the ability of the work force to have a better quality of life by presenting to them jobs which pay more,” Summey said. “That should be the goal of all of us in leadership.”