A Bankstown company is using advanced carbon-fibre manufacturing techniques to build parts for the revolutionary Joint Strike Fighter.
Quickstep builds 35 separate parts for the JSF, or F-35, including doors, panels, hatches, external airframe skins and vertical tailfins.
Each of the three F-35 variants has Quickstep components.
Every fighter being built now includes $250,000 worth of parts manufactured in Sydney’s Bankstown and it is likely more than 3000 of the aircraft will be produced for customer nations.
Quickstep chief executive Mark Burgess joined the company 18 months ago and he is a passionate advocate for the industry. “Australia’s not well known for advanced manufacturing and, unfortunately, nor is it an area of great interest to Australians,” Mr Burgess said.
“But if you look at this site in Bankstown and the Boeing facility in Fishermans Bend [Melbourne], we do have real capability in the production of carbon-fibre composites for aerospace applications,” he said.
“On many JSF parts we’ve got the global supply,” Mr Burgess said. “We’ve got substantial content on every single JSF that rolls off the production line at Fort Worth, Texas, in northern Italy and soon in Japan.”
On the large and distinctive vertical tails, Quickstep has a third of the global market. The company produces the composite parts which make up about 45 per cent of each fin. More parts for the fins come from BAE Systems in Adelaide and they are assembled by Marand in Victoria.
Last year, sales of JSF components brought about 60 per cent of the company’s revenue. That will increase as production of the aircraft ramps up.
Quickstep also manufactures wing flaps for C130J transport aircraft and, with a fast-growing international reputation for building composite airframe components, the company is also set to make parts for the RAAF’s new Reaper unmanned aircraft.
Mr Burgess said that five years ago Quickstep’s revenue was $2.6 million. That increased to $59m last year and this year that is projected to grow more than 20 per cent. “We’re growing at a very rapid rate and we’ve got a very solid base on which to build and secure additional work on F-35 and C-130 parts and to find more work,” he said.
“I’m absolutely delighted with the progress we’re making. We’re going to grow by more than 20 per cent, year on year, this year.
“That’s largely driven by the JSP program but we’ve got a huge pipeline of opportunity for additional growth in our core defence aerospace business as well as some significant growth anticipated on the commercial side, particularly around out proprietary process technology.”
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin Australia’s business development director, Neale Prescott, says another key Australian component of the JSF project is the locally designed, deployable cabin built by Varley Group in Newcastle.
The cabins enable the deployment of the JSF’s autonomic logistics information system, or ALIS, and its operation at a classified level in the field. They also provide mission-planning centres for the RAAF to send with a detachment of JSFs in Australia or abroad.
That will give full connection with the data needed for their missions and the central operating squadrons in Australia.
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said the cabins were critical to operating the aircraft.
Brendan Nicholson is defence editor of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute site, The Strategist.
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