Pilatus Business Aircraft broke ground July 13th on a new 118,000-sq-ft North and South American headquarters for aircraft completions and support at Jefferson County (Colorado) Airport in Broomfield. Pilatus Business Aircraft has been based at “Jeffco” since 1996 in a collection of leased buildings. The new facility on the airport's west end will consolidate everything in one location. Pilatus employs 80 people in Broomfield and expects to grow to approximately 140 employees there when the PC-24 twinjet hits full rate production by 2020. Both the PC-12 turboprop single and the PC-24 will be completed at Broomfield for customers in North and South America. The PC-24 is expected to enter service next year. The new facility is expected to open in Spring 2018.
The new building will bring everything together under one roof, said Tom Aniello, Pilatus Business Aircraft vice president of marketing. It will have the capacity to process two dozen PC-12s and PC-24s simultaneously, he said. Broomfield has completed more than 1,000 PC-12s to date.
The new completion plant will require Pilatus to almost double its employment at Broomfield. Most of the new hires will be in fabrication, Aniello said, adding that plans call for the first eight PC-24s to be completed at the Pilatus plant in Switzerland; the ninth aircraft is scheduled to arrive in Broomfield for completion at the beginning of 2018. "We probably won't have our new facility open for another six months after that," Aniello said. "But by mid-2018 we'll be up and running."
Aniello said he expected sales of the PC-24 to parallel sales of the PC-12, with 70 percent of the worldwide demand for the jet coming from North and South America. He estimated that the long-term demand for the jet would be on the order of 40 to 50 aircraft per year, with 30 to 35 coming through Broomfield. Pilatus has achieved record sales in recent years and now employs more than 1,800 in Switzerland, a 40 percent increase over the last three years, Aniello said. The jump in manpower was due to concurrent strong demand for the PC-12 NG and Pilatus' military aircraft, as well as the resource demands of bringing the PC-24 to market. Pilatus's new Broomfield facility will be the first business to be located on the west side of the airport, spearheading a larger commercial development plan for Jefferson County.
