Malta’s attraction as a place chosen as an aircraft maintenance hub lies in its skill base, EasyJet head of Engineering and Technical director, Ian Davies, told The Malta Business Weekly yesterday, a day after the announcement that the low-cost airline would be the first client of leading global maintenance, repair and overhaul services provider SR Technics in Malta.

Low-cost carrier EasyJet has had an association contract with SR Technics for five years. The contract was up for renewal, and as part of that process, EasyJet and SR Technics looked at their cost base and in doing decided they had to find a place outside of central Europe.

Zurich is an area with a high cost of living and that makes things difficult, said Mr Davies, so the companies embarked on a process to identify a more cost effective area to do maintenance. SR Technics started with 54 locations that included Estonia, Latvia, Morocco and Serbia, among others.

The contract covers heavy maintenance as well as component maintenance and other services.

“We narrowed it down to two locations, Malta being one of them,” said Mr Davies, stopping short of saying which the other country is, though he did say it is a non-EU country.

“One of the big issues for us is to have a place inside the EU, because it makes it much easier for us with taxation issues and transfer of goods.”

In the past five to six months SR Technics and EasyJet have been speaking to the government to see whether Malta is the place they wanted to commit to.

“I think the government should be proud of the way it persuaded us – we obviously needed some persuading to come here. I think the finance minister did a fantastic job in getting SR Technics to come here. Alan Camilleri from Malta Enterprise did a great job as well. So we’re delighted.”

SR Technics’ main backer is Mubadala, a leading business development and investment company based in Abu Dhabi.

“These people are investing for 20 to 50 years’ time. When oil runs out in Abu Dhabi they want to have a sustainable future with a network of world-class companies. SR Technics Malta will be one of those companies – I think that’s a great thing to achieve.”

He spoke highly of the courses offered at the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), saying Malta’s big benefit is its skill base.

Speaking about the type of jobs that SR Technics would be offering, Mr Davies said they certainly are long-term jobs.

“You cannot, however, move from low to high skilled jobs overnight. The apprenticeships for these jobs are four years. The raw material is here, in the skills that we’ve seen at MCAST, and in the more mature engineers who can move from one industry to another.”

He said people have to be patient while SR Technics trains up the workforce. He made it clear that it will take some time, but the companies’ commitment for 11 years will see that by five to six years time, the bulk of the people employed will be Maltese, including the management.

“I’m confident. We’re encouraging that. It’s not our business, but we’re in partnership with SR Technics and we’re encouraging them to capitalise on local management. After all it’s expensive to bring expatriates into Malta. That they will have to do for a short period, but ultimately those jobs will turn into permanent long-term jobs here.

“We are aware there were some potential redundancies here. We’re hoping to capitalise on recruiting some of these people from already technical industries.”

The biggest attraction for SR Technics and EasyJet is the fact that we fly here, the support from the government and more importantly the actual work force.

Mr Davies said: “We’re told and we’re hopeful that SR Technics will get a loyal and very trainable workforce and from looking at MCAST and the training facilities there I’m confident that that’s going to be the case.”

Initially, for EasyJet’s aircraft, SR Technics will employ about 250 people, he said. SR Technics initial business plan is for a four-bay hangar which would create a capacity to double the number of aircraft coming through.

Within about 18 months, EasyJet will have about 40 aircraft a year and there is capacity to bring about another 40 aircraft a year.