Rolls-Royce has signed a deal with Air China to supply its Trent 1000 engines for 15 Boeing Dreamliner aircraft.
The company said the deal would add around $1bn (£670m) to its order book, and build on its strong relationship with the airline. The company received a $1.8bn engine order from Air China in 2010 and the airline currently flies 49 Trent 700-powered aircraft. The news lifted Rolls’s share price by nearly 1% to 955p.
However, Rolls-Royce’s relationships in the region are not limited to Air China. The 2010 order followed a separate deal with China Eastern Airlines, made during David Cameron’s trade mission. Rolls-Royce states that it has “been actively involved in the rapid growth of Chinese civil aviation” and has operations across China. The engineering group supplies an estimated 56% of engines in China, as of 2010.
The deal comes after a disappointing year for the group, with a series of profit warnings and a number of job cuts. Last week, it announced 200 redundancies in Scotland as part of a plan to reduce headcount by 2,600 worldwide.
The order follows a deal earlier this month to supply Trent 700 worth $300m to Turkish Airlines.
“The second sales deal in a month for Rolls’s Trent engines is a start in the right direction to repairing the investor damage from several profit warnings over the past year,” said Lewis Sturdy, a London Capital Group dealer.
