Washington state officials are talking with Rolls-Royce PLC about potential sites – including Everett – where the British company could put a factory to build jet engines for new Boeing Co. airplanes.
The company plans a new American factory, and next week will ask fewer than 10 states to submit proposals, a spokesman for the company’s North American division said Tuesday.
Washington “very well could be on that list,” said Tom Sullivan, a Rolls-Royce North America spokesman in Virginia.
Everett is one of the sites state officials will propose, said Michelle Zahrly, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.
“We’re waiting,” she said. “The governor’s poised and ready to begin talking with them again.”
Local development officials also are trying to anticipate what facilities and services Rolls-Royce would need, said Deborah Knutson, president of the Snohomish County Economic Development Council.
“This is a big deal,” she said. “Engines are a significant piece of that airplane. We want our part of it.”
Rolls-Royce has decided to build its new Trent 1000 engines in the United States, Sullivan said. The engines are being developed for Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner. They’ll also be used on Airbus’ competing A350 and on Boeing’s 747-8, the recently announced upgrade to its Everett-built jumbo jet.
The factory would be small to start with, employing about 150 people, Sullivan said. Production would start in 2010.
But Rolls-Royce also is looking to locate its maritime and energy businesses near the new engine plant, which would give it the potential for future growth, he said.
Washington is a likely site for the new plant, Sullivan said. But he said Rolls-Royce might also consider sites in Indiana, where it already builds aircraft engines, and Ohio, where it manufacturers turbines and compressors for the oil and gas industries.
Rolls-Royce has an office in Bellevue, where it provides customer service to Boeing; a plant in Seattle that manufactures propeller shafts for ships; and a unit of Rolls-Royce Canada in Coquitlam, B.C., that repairs and overhauls marine engines.
Rolls-Royce was one of a dozen Boeing suppliers that Gov. Christine Gregoire met with at the Paris air show in June, Zahrly said. Since then, staff members have met with company representatives. The governor will get involved once Rolls-Royce requests proposals, she said.
If Rolls-Royce does ask Washington for site suggestions, the state will propose Everett, Spokane and Moses Lake, Zahrly said, and state officials will work with local development groups in each city to flesh out their proposals.
For its part, Boeing says it’s up to each supplier to decide for itself where to locate.
“It’s a matter of what works best for the supplier,” 787 program spokeswoman Yvonne Leach said. “There are those that are finding it makes some sense to be close to final assembly.”
It makes a lot of sense to be in Everett, Knutson said. E-mail and teleconferencing can’t replace “the partnership and opportunities of being right across the street” from Boeing, she said.
The local development council has been reviewing real estate and job-training information that Rolls-Royce is likely to request, she said. It also has been studying how state aerospace industry tax breaks could benefit the company.
Those tax breaks, granted by the Legislature when Boeing decided to assemble the 787 in Everett, started taking effect in October with a reduction in the business and occupation tax rate on aircraft and parts manufacturers.
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