The qualities of willpower, courage, and strength which we associate with the tiger are some of the core attributes which we nurture and embrace at every level within Acro.
Armed with our company-wide ethos of bold determination and supported by the considerable financial and world-class intellectual resources of Zhejiang Tiancheng Controls Co. Ltd, our Chinese parent company, Acro is poised for further growth and development as we leap into The Year Of The Tiger.
Tradition links The Year of the Tiger to change and upheaval and both will be evident within our sector in 2022 as the global aviation sector reboots after the unprecedented economic challenges brought about by the pandemic.
Within what will continue to be a fast-changing scenario we have already identified significant commercial prospects for our business and, with Big Cat agility, we are ready to pounce on the opportunities ahead. The increasing use of narrowbody aircraft on long distances, for example, which we have long predicted, creates huge opportunities for our versatile, lightweight, space-optimising designs.
Those designs – standard and bespoke – are already rolling off the production lines with increased efficiencies at our new 100,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Crick, Northamptonshire. Our facilities there, together with our rapidly expanding, highly trained and firmly focused workforce, are today enabling us to create exceptional aircraft seating for customers around the world.
The substantial investment in the UK has been echoed in China where Acro together with our parent Zhejiang Tiancheng Controls Co. Ltd has already established a ground-breaking composites factory where we produce all of our composite backs and explore new, innovative approaches to making seats lighter, more robust and lower cost and will shortly begin work on the creation of a multi million GBP machining factility in Taizhou, Zhejiang for the manufacture of aluminium parts such as ribs and legs for Acro seats, further developing our capabilities and integrating our supply chain. We are also collaborating with our parent company to develop seat dress covers in China, capitalising on its outstanding automotive industry experience and cut & sew facilities. We also plan to start manufacturing Acro’s aircraft seats in our facility in China, supporting Chinese and Asia Pacific customers with rapid local response in the near future, allowing us to better support the recovery and growth we all predict in this region.
As we celebrate the Lunar New Year and highlight the continued strengthening of our collaborations with Chinese suppliers, we are honoured to celebrate our presence in a custom-built facility within the prestigious COMAC Customer Selection Centre in Pudong, Shanghai. COMAC is the largest showcase of its kind in Asia; an innovative concept which provides customers with an optimal selection process via massive technologically equipped exhibition halls for the display, technical exchange and evaluation of whole aircraft configurations.
The Year of The Tiger will see all of us at Acro unleash our energy, ambition and tenacity in pursuit of excellence, tempering those virtues with our legendary hard work, integrity and shared vision. We hope that you will be part of our continuing success story and, to all our customers, colleagues and partners I say ‘gōng xǐ fā cái.’
