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There have been serious fears about Bombardier and the future of its five production sites in the North since the Canadian group announced a global restructuring programme last November, which would result in 5,000 redundancies.
Belfast was earmarked for nearly 500 of these. While it was, as the trade union Unite described it, “a heavy blow”, it allayed fears that the outcome could have been much worse.
Bombardier, once the North’s largest private sector employer, is as integral a part of Belfast as the giant yellow cranes of Harland & Wolff that dominate the city’s landscape. The Canadian aerospace group has had a major presence in the city since it acquired what was then
Short Brothers from the UK government in 1989.
Supply chain
Aside from its direct workforce, Bombardier, which accounts for at least 10 per cent of the North’s total annual manufacturing exports, also has a significant supply chain in Northern Ireland that supports thousands of additional jobs.
According to Bombardier Belfast’s statistics, it has a European chain totalling around 900 approved suppliers. Out of these, the company says 800 are based in Britain and Ireland.
In 2017, the value of contracts awarded to these firms was around £200 million. At least 50 companies supply Bombardier with components for the A220 aircraft (previously known as the C-Series) alone. [...]
