UK Company Thriving As Third-Party Rolls-Royce Parts Supplier

BARCELONA—Blossoming used parts supplier AOG-247 has a familiar business strategy: find and resell in-demand parts for popular turbofan engines.

 

But the UK-based firm offers a key differentiator that has proven integral to its rapid ascent: It specializes in Rolls-Royce components.

 

Long considered locked down by the manufacturer, support for Rolls engines is far less common among third-party providers than with other major engine manufacturers.

 

But as widebody demand gained strength amid an increasingly challenging supply-chain environment, operators of Rolls-powered aircraft soon faced the same issues as everyone else. Spare parts sources dried up, and overhaul-shop slots became harder to find. Once an engine was inducted, parts shortages often translated into longer turn times.

 

"When you start to talk to the airlines [and] lessors, there are some parts they can't get from Rolls Royce," AOG-247 founder and Managing Director David Bradley told Aviation Week on the sidelines of MRO Europe here in Barcelona. "That created an opportunity."

 

Bradley, an engineer who learned the aftermarket business working for several component suppliers and major MRO providers, invested his own money in a legacy Rolls RB211, flipping it early in the recovery. The proceeds went into his first Trent-family engine, which soon became the company's specialty.

 

In less than three years, AOG-247 has purchased more than 30 Trents—mostly Trent 700s that power Airbus A330s. It has torn down 12 700s, developing a large stock of line-replaceable units (LRU) and other spares.

 

"We've developed our own capability in-house because capacity to get them torn down was taking a long time," Bradley said. "We've invested in the tooling where we can now remove all the LRUs. We started to remove some of the external core components, like fan cases and disks. We're just waiting for the next stage where we can then get into the full engine ourselves."

 

AOG-247 has two facilities: one in the UK and one in Germany.

 

It has little problem finding customers that need its parts. A330 activity has rebounded strongly since the downturn, driven by long-haul demand and continued struggles to deliver current-generation widebodies on time. The constant utilization and MRO support challenges have pushed some operators to zero out components before moving on.

 

"We're buying assets in the market today where we are literally seeing units that have run out," Bradley said. There are zero cycles.

 

The company's biggest challenge is convincing potential customers it has what it says it has.

 

"They don't believe that we have this inventory," he said. "So we're branding ourselves as 'We do Trents. Come to us.' We offer an alternative to the market."

 

AOG-247's customer base is slowly growing. Rolls buys parts to feed its overhaul network in a pinch, Bradley said, and more operators are signing on.

 

"Airlines are now coming to us direct," Bradley said. "We're new to the market. We're not a big name. But airlines are starting to learn about us, because we're the only game in town that's got most of these components."