Fast 5: Werner Aero Plans Portfolio Expansion

Tony Kondo became president and CEO of aftermarket supplier Werner Aero at the beginning of this year after serving as executive vice president since 2022. He spoke with Aviation Week Network about the company’s recent airframe acquisitions and its near-term expansion plans.

You took over as president and CEO of Werner Aero this year, and since then, the company has acquired several narrowbody airframes for disassembly. What are your main priorities for the company moving forward?

The intention is to grow this business in every area. We buy used aircraft, tear them down and sell those rotables to customers, so we want to buy more aircraft and then try to sell more parts to the customers. In relation to that, we expanded our [Mahwah, New Jersey] warehouse and we are trying to expand our personnel.

Our plan this year is to buy around 20 aircraft, mainly narrowbodies like the [Airbus] A320 and [Boeing] 737. We also plan to buy more [Embraer] E-Jets—E170s and E190s. In total we plan to buy 20 or more aircraft this year.

What new capacity does the expansion of Werner Aero’s Mahwah warehouse facility add to your business?

Our expanded facility in New Jersey is basically double our warehouse space, so we can buy more aircraft, but we need to find a space to store those parts. It’s very important to have enough space to have enough parts to be able to sell those on time to the customer.

We soon plan to add more warehouse space in Arizona because most of our teardowns are there, so it makes sense for us to set up new warehousing. We also plan to set up a new warehouse overseas, somewhere in Europe or Asia, but it’s still to be decided.

Could you tell us a bit about Werner Aero’s teardown partners and repair network?

Werner Aero doesn’t have capability to do teardowns or repair parts, so we always team up with outside vendors for teardowns and repairs. Most of the aircraft we buy are mainly airframes, which means we need to do the teardowns in the location where the airframe is. We work a lot with ecube, Ascent Aviation Services and Air Salvage International. 

Aircraft delays, new engine reliability issues, economic uncertainty and geopolitical issues are all having an impact on the supply chain. How have these factors affected your parts strategy?

Some supply chain issues seem to have improved, but still, overall, the supply chain issue remains in general in this industry. That’s why our customers are still struggling to find new parts from the OEM. In some cases, the lead times are very long on some single parts from the OEM, so that’s why we still see strong demand for used parts ready-to-go because new parts take longer. That’s why we keep investing in the current platforms to support our customers.

Are there certain assets or parts that you’re seeing particularly high demand for at the moment? What types of assets would you like to acquire more of in the near future?

We plan to keep investing in narrowbodies and regional jets, but as we grow and as time goes on, several aircraft types are coming to this category. We see some new A320neos being torn down now to support A320neo customers, and the replacement of the E-Jet is the A220, so those are still new platforms, but we see that there are several opportunities to tear down those new aircraft types to support airline customers because of lack of supply for those parts. We plan to keep investing in current technology aircraft—A320ceos, 737NGs and Embraer aircraft—but we plan to invest more in A320neos and A220s, for example, and maybe we could invest in expanding our portfolio to widebody aircraft like the 787s, 777s and A330s.