ecube’s venture over the Atlantic sees their new facility, established within Coolidge Municipal Airport, Arizona, open. The newly founded Americas base located only 50 miles north of the infamous Aircraft Boneyard, Pinal Park, will accompany existing sites in Castellón, Spain and ecube headquarters in St. Athan, UK.
As a result of the expansion, ecube are now the only Aircraft End-of-Life Solutions company that operates in the two largest regions for aircraft activity, Europe, and North America, supporting around 90% of the global aircraft part-out market.
ecube says the strategic decision to expand into the States was driven by customer demand and fully supported by their leadership team who see it as a logical development in the company’s growth.
“We underwent an extensive exercise over the past 12 months in speaking with and listening to our customers to understand the optimal location for asset owners of EOL aircraft, this inevitably resulted in ecube planting its flag at a new location in Arizona,” ecube CEO Lee McConnellogue, said. “At the forefront of our U. S. expansion plans is consistency of service, ensuring we replicate the experience our customers have learned to enjoy and rely on at our UK and EU facilities. We also plan to elevate the importance of our industry’s circular economy within the region, focusing on quality aircraft teardowns delivered with expertise and experience.”
The launch of the new Americas location has been complemented by the arrival of its first aircraft destined for teardown. October 5th saw ecube welcome an ACS managed Boeing 737-700, being re-delivered by SAS, who ecube has had a long-standing relationship with on past projects, and its arrival only solidifies the strong relationship between all parties.
“We are very excited to be working with ecube at their new location in Coolidge,” said Kevin VanDenBerg, SVP – commercial & asset management at ACS. “ecube has a terrific customer focus and we have valued their partnership throughout a longstanding working relationship at the UK St. Athan location.”
To address the retirements of both narrowbody and widebody aircraft are expected to increase at the tail end of 2022, with growth continuing into 2023, and the company forecasts an uptick in both aircraft storage and teardown activity across the board, saying the convergence of aircraft utilization and passenger traffic trends to pre-pandemic levels should elevate demand for Used Serviceable Material (USM), and as a key determinant in aircraft EOL evaluations they anticipate a higher level of global retirements (compared to the previous two years) to service this need.