Flying under the radar, small foreign firms find success at Paris Air Show

Air show minnows find success amid industry gloom

LE BOURGET, France — Leandro Silva e Abreu didn’t sign any of the multi-million-euro orders that make headlines at the Paris air show, but for the 22-year-old Brazilian the event was still a huge success.

Silva e Abreu’s company, Aeroarte, is one of a record number of small and mid-sized companies from around the world that help make Paris’ Le Bourget air show the world’s biggest, for whom success and failure isn’t measured by the lucrative contracts — or lack thereof — that have been the media’s focus all week.

Aeroarte employs 15 people in Sao Paulo, Brazil making aircraft interior upholstery and protective covers for helicopters. It came to the air show this year for the first time as part of a 25-strong contingent of Brazilian aerospace companies, double the number from the last Paris air show in 2007.

“Right now we’re restricted to the Brazilian market,” said Silva e Abreu, Aeroarte’s commercial manager. “We’ve made some new contacts at the show, but what we most liked is finding support from a French business development agency,” he added.

Thanks to a meeting during the air show with Paris’ regional economic development agency, Silva e Abreu found affordable office space at the city’s Charles de Gaulle airport, and the company aims to launch its French operations there by 2011, Silva e Abreu said.

Three other small Brazilian aerospace companies — Ambra, Avionics, and Mectron — came away from the Paris Air Show with signed deals, said Agliberto Chagas, executive director of Cecompi, a business development organization that helped set up the first-ever Brazilian pavilion at the Paris air show this year. For a number of the companies, like Avionics, Bras Copter and Giovanni Passarella, it was the first time exhibiting at the air show.

Small and mid-sized foreign companies like these made up more than half the 2,000 exhibitors at the event, helping offset cutbacks and no-shows by some of the aviation industries bigger names, said Patrick Guerin, a spokesman for the air show.

Other countries’ taking part in the air show for the first time included Mexico, Tunisia, Australia, Lithuania and Libya, Guerin said.

At the Mexican pavilion, Arnulfo Martinez said he’d had around 40 meetings with aerospace giants such as EADS and Bell Helicopter as well as smaller companies, aimed at getting them to invest in Mexico’s aerospace industry hub of Baja California, just across the border from San Diego.

“GKN Aerospace told us they have big plans for 2010 to 2011 in Mexicali,” the capital and heart of the aerospace industry in Baja California, said Martinez, the projects and marketing director for Ivemsa, a company that helps bring foreign investment to Baja California. “We also saw a Connecticut-based company and another company from Ontario who say they have plans there over the next one to two years,” Martinez said. He estimated that his work at the air show would directly lead to at least three foreign aerospace companies visiting his area over the next year.

The Mexican pavilion, located in one of the giant halls that also housed the air show’s larger US and Canadian pavilions, was made up of 50 people from the Mexican government and private aerospace companies, said Roberto Durazo, project manager for Mexicali’s development agency, making it Mexico’s largest ever presence at the Paris air show.

“It’s the first time, but it’s not going to be the last one,” Durazo said. “I’m sure we’re going to continue having a presence in more Paris air shows because we are sure it’s going to help us as a country to continue growing in this industry.”