Chinese MRO provider Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (Gameco) broke ground on its component and composite repair centers on Wednesday (June 24) with the new facilities on course for an early 2022 opening. 

Plans for the 600 million yuan ($84.7 million) facilities, located at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, were first announced last summer and will see around 581,000 sq. ft. added to Gameco’s capacity for maintenance services catering for China Southern Airlines and third-party customers once built. The component center will account for 409,000 sq. ft. in capacity while the composites facility will amount to 172,000 sq. ft. 

When construction is finished, the company says it plans to bolster its parts repair capabilities for newer aircraft types such as the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787. It also has an eye on building up its in-house component offerings in areas such as aircraft modification, refurbishment and out-of-manual repair capabilities on specific components. 

These include avionics, electrics, instrumentation, inflight entertainment, pneumatics and hydraulics, among others. For its composite structure parts, it will look to boost offerings for nacelles, inlet cowls, thrust reversers, fan cowls and radomes at the site.

Aviation Week’s Fleet & MRO Forecast estimates component MRO services will account for nearly one-quarter of all aftermarket expenditures from this year through to 2029. Estimates forecast around $25.9 billion will be spent on these repairs over the next decade.

As part of a separate investment targeting additional capacity, Gameco is building a third hangar at its Guangzhou airport operation that is expected to be ready by next year. 

The third facility, costing around 886 million yuan ($128.2 million) and with a volume of 635,000 sq. ft., is being built to address bottlenecks in China’s widebody MRO support services. Once constructed, it will be able to accommodate up to six larger aircraft types along with five narrowbody aircraft for heavy maintenance work. 

Despite the impact of the novel coronavirus, which resulted in a global drop in maintenance workloads, Gameco has looked to grow in other aftermarket areas and, last week, inaugurated its 737-800 Boeing Converted Freighter (BCF) program in Guangzhou.