ADE Sets Out Ambitious Plans For Asia’s First Components Marketplace

Asia Digital Engineering (ADE) hopes it can simplify aircraft component trading, making the buying process transparent to airline clients.

Drawing on lessons from the pandemic, the Capital A MRO venture launched Aerotrade, which it touts as the region’s first components marketplace.

What started as selling surplus stocks of Airbus A320 components during the pandemic, Aerotrade has now expanded to a network of parts distributors, amounting to an inventory of $240 million. Beyond A320 parts, the stocks now include components from A330s, A350s, and ATR 72 turboprops. Boeing 737 components are now coming in too.  

Adnan Mansur, ADE's head of digital and innovations services, told Aviation Daily that the internal target is to reach an inventory worth $1 billion by the end of 2024. In 2023, the company attained a revenue of $10 million and has goals to increase that by 10-15% in 2024.

He said the design of the platform would be similar to that of e-commerce sites like Amazon, where clients simply add components to a cart and check out their order. A key difference is parts on Aerotrade are listed with a price display, meaning greater transparency as well as quicker acquisition without the need to request quotes.

As parts are acquired through ADE, Adnan says it would benefit smaller airlines which might have a lower credit rating from suppliers.

Adnan says that there will be some education needed for both suppliers and clients on the Aerotrade platform, and that more features will be added such as artificial intelligence elements to further simplify the process.

Distributors including Aero Hero, Initial Aviation, SetnaIO, ST Engineering and Topcast and  have joined Aerotrade, to name a few.

Adnan says ADE is now in discussions with original aircraft manufacturers to include its parts in the inventory, although the short-term challenge now is to integrate the Enterprise Resource Planning or Management Information System between the two entities.

In addition to the AirAsia group, other airline clients include Air India, Batik Air, Cebu Pacific and Myanmar Airways.