Aura Aero gets green light to begin building Toulouse factory
Aura Aero has received the go-ahead to begin construction on its new aircraft production facility, at Toulouse-Francazal airport, France.
With over 100 orders for its Integral aircraft as well as Letters of Intent (LoIs) for 330 ERA aircraft, Aura’s current infrastructures need to develop “very significantly in the near future”, it said. In order to meet its industrial calendar, planning on a production start for ERA – a regional 19-seater regional electric-hybrid aircraft – as soon as the end of 2025.
Aura is planning to move, within the next thirty months, to this new site, bearing 40,000sqm of buildings. The factory represents an investment of €150m, funded with the support of Toulouse-Métropole and the Occitanie Region,
Jérémy Caussade, co-founder and president, Aura Aero, said: “The trust that many international airlines place in us confirms the wish of the aviation sector to quickly shift towards decarbonisation, with aircraft that better respect the environment. We aim at being among the leaders of this industrial revolution and we would like to express our gratitude to the regional communities, Toulouse Métropole and the Occitanie Region, for supporting us in the realisation of this project, in a challenging time frame.”
The new site will be scaled to manufacture around 150 aircraft per year, 50 INTEGRALs and 100 ERAs. Concurrently, the staff headcount will go from 130 people today to some 1,600 employees at maximum rate.
Aura said it is committed, with the Brunerie architectural firm, to minimise the buildings’ carbon impact, notably through the use of bio-sourced materials and processes, and through the search for optimised, no air-conditioning heating systems, with simple regulation solutions.
There will be onsite production and storage of electricity, for the needs of the buildings, for the industrial processes and for the charging of batteries, either for the manufactured aircraft or for the light logistics and employee vehicles. There will also be onsite processing of waste water and use of rainwater for sanitary facilities and watering.
