PARIS, Dec 15 (Reuters) - France’s Zodiac Aerospace is behind schedule in supplying toilets for the Airbus A350, it said on Tuesday, just as it emerges from a year-long crisis over delays in production of aircraft seats that disrupted some airplane deliveries.
Earlier on Tuesday Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders said the planemaker may miss its target for 15 A350 deliveries this year because of delays in receiving cabin fittings.
The delay is likely to cap deliveries of Europe’s newest passenger jet at 14 units this year.
Zodiac Aerospace Chief Executive Olivier Zarrouati told analysts on a conference call that resolving the delays in delivering onboard toilets would take only a “few months”.
Zodiac, which also supplies Boeing, said it was meanwhile ahead of schedule on deliveries of A350 electrical systems.
Airbus is in the midst of a sharp increase in output of the A350, designed to compete with the Boeing 787 and 777.
Zodiac has opened a new assembly line in Canada to support the production increase, which includes plans for a quadrupling of output to 60 aircraft in 2016.
“We are working very closely with Airbus to analyse our collective capacities to support the assembly line,” Zarrouati said. “It won’t take as long to resolve as the seats...We are talking about a few months,” he added.
Rising production of the latest wide-body jets, whose cabins tend to be customised, as well as record production of smaller and more standardised models, has stretched a global supply chain and proved particularly tough for interiors suppliers.
Zodiac has had a string of profit warnings.
However, it announced a new reduction in the number of aircraft seats caught up by recent production delays to 300 units from 500 in late November and 1,700 in September.
Confirming medium-term financial targets, the Paris-based company said its revenue fell 2.6 percent in its first quarter (Sept-Nov), on a comparable basis, to 1.238 billion euros ($1.35 billion). ($1 = 0.9163 euros) (Reporting by Cyril Altmeyer and Tim Hepher; editing by Susan Thomas)
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