Gandhinagar: India’s first private sector aircraft manufacturing facility and its associated industrial ecosystem are likely to be located at the Dholera Special Investment Region in Gujarat, states BW Businessworld in an article.

Airbus is going to manufacture 40 C-295MW military transport aircraft in India in partnership with an Indian consortium led by Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) under a $2.8 Billion contract signed with India’s Ministry of Defence in September 2021, the report states and adds that a concurrent offsets contract obligates Airbus Defence & Space to source equipment and systems worth 30 percent of the value of the C-295MW contract from Indian partners.

The report of BW Businessworld states, “The manufacturing facilities of the Indian offsets partners are also likely to be co-located at Dholera. This complex could be the centrepiece of the Dholera Special Investment Region’s Aviation Zone and MRO Hub planned adjacent to an in-the-works greenfield international airport. Besides manufacturing units, the plan for the Aviation Zone includes an aviation academy, flight training institute and MRO facilities for airframes, engines and C&D checks.”

It states that the Dholera airport will have two runways of 4,000 metres and 2,910 metres respectively and they would be essential to the flight-testing facility for the Airbus-Tata complex.

A 1,426-acre land parcel at Navagam village has been reserved for the Dholera airport, declared an ‘Early Bird Project’ by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation and the Government of Gujarat, it further states.