AFP, BERLIN
The European aircraft maker Airbus wants to launch a cargo version of its best selling A320 model in cooperation with the Russian firms UAC and Irkut, press reports said yesterday.
“By the end of May the pro-ject’s financing and the Germano-Russian company’s new structure should be wrapped up,” aerospace executive Andreas Sperl was quoted as saying in the Financial Times Deutschland.
Sperl is director of the Elbe Flugzeugwerke plant in eastern Dresden that is owned by Airbus’ parent company EADS.
The factory is to own a major share of the project.
He said a potential client was already interested in buying up to 30 planes and a prototype is to be rolled out in 2011.
A corporate structure, called the Airbus Freighter Conversion (AFC), was created last year to oversee conversion of Airbus passenger aircraft into cargo planes. UAC and Irkut, which are already members of the group, are to hold a 25 percent share at term, while Airbus is to own 18 percent and the Dresden factory 32 percent, the newspaper said.
The cost of converting the single aisle A320 is estimated at US$100 million, of which US$70 million was to be financed by bank credits, said Sperl, who is also head of the AFC supervisory board.
Meanwhile, Russian billionaire Leonard Blavatnik wants to invest in the German low-cost airline Air Berlin, airline boss Joachim Hunold told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel in comments published yesterday.
“He is without doubt a prestigious investor, who is clearly interested in a long-term commitment,” said Hunold, who is head of the second-biggest German airline.
After meeting twice with Blavatnik, the Air Berlin boss said: “I came away with a very positive impression.”
On Friday, Air Berlin said that the Vatas investment fund, owned by South African businessman Robert Hersov, had sold its 18.56 percent stake in Air Berlin last Tuesday.
The airline had spoken of interest by an institutional investor, but did not identify one.
It is apparently Access Industries, a fund owned by the Russian billionaire.
Blavatnik made his fortune in oil, and now lives in Britain, where he holds one of the biggest fortunes in the country.
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