APOC-CRS recruited new repair technicians for the venture.
APOC Component Repair Shop (APOC-CRS) has gained certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for Airbus and Boeing narrowbody NiCd battery repair services at its facility in the Netherlands.
APOC Aviation established the new Rotterdam-based business earlier this year to focus on component repairs. It says that following its first approval, it will look to fast track more capabilities. These include battery repairs for widebody aircraft such as the Airbus A330 and batteries found on Embraer regional aircraft.
According to APOC, the EASA certification took around 18 months to achieve. The process encompassed the creation of a maintenance organization exposition, where APOC had to specify the scope of work it would be undertaking and how it intended to comply with the regulation, and investment in tooling, equipment and MRO software.
The company says APOC-CRS will complement APOC Aviation’s core business of narrowbody aircraft parts trading and leasing. All processes encompassing recovery, inspection, disassembly, repair, testing and re-certification of parts will be streamlined, APOC says.
Danny Goergen, workshop manager at APOC-CRS, says the facility has potential for expansion as well as storage and training services. “We have consciously built a replicable blueprint from scratch that we can ultimately emulate in other markets, such as the U.S.,” he says.
Goergen adds that APOC-CRS plans to work toward obtaining FAA approval in the coming months and, following that, it will seek certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
“Already we are being asked to look at specialist battery repair programs for airlines and to take up shop overflow work from leading MROs,” Goergen says. "We foresaw this demand when we built the business case for setting up APOC-CRS as a separate business just over two years ago.”
