OGMA Industria Aeronautica de Portugal

OGMA has been repairing and building aircraft at Alverca, on the Tagus north of Lisbon, since 1918. It started life as the Portuguese military's aeronautical materiel depot and is now a commercial maintenance and manufacturing business owned 65 per cent by Embraer and 35 per cent by the Portuguese state, the state stake held through idD Portugal Defence, the national defence industry holding company. Private capital arrived in 2005 and Embraer took the majority in 2012. The site covers around 440,000 square metres, with eleven hangars for civil and military work and a three kilometre runway on the doorstep. Three service lines carry the business, and an in-house academy trains the technicians who staff them.

Aircraft maintenance is the largest line and roughly seventy per cent of volume. OGMA is an authorised maintenance centre for Embraer, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney, and it splits the work between defence aviation, civil and executive aviation, aircraft painting, and engineering and customised support services. Portuguese and allied C-130 transports and F-16 fighters have gone through the hangars alongside regional jets and business aircraft. The mix matters commercially, because military depot inputs arrive on long planning cycles that the operators can see years ahead, while the civil and executive work fills the bays in between and keeps a skilled labour force busy. Alverca is a working airfield, not a workshop.

Engines and components is the second line and the one with the clearest niche. OGMA overhauls the Rolls-Royce T56 turboprop that powers the C-130 and the AE 2100 series that powers the C-130J, plus the AE 1107C that turns the V-22 proprotors and the AE 3007 used on regional and unmanned aircraft. On the Pratt & Whitney side it has taken on the geared turbofan, working the PW1100G-JM that flies on the A320neo family and the PW1900G fitted to Embraer's E2. Component repair and accessory work runs through dedicated backshops with their own engineering teams.

Aerostructures is manufacturing rather than repair, and it is where the Embraer relationship shows. OGMA builds the central fuselage, elevators, landing gear door and sponson for the C-390 Millennium, nacelle cowls, wing trailing edge panels and harnesses for the Lockheed Martin C-130J, central fuselage sections for Airbus Defence and Space, and nose fairings, cabin structure, air intakes and interior panels for Airbus Helicopters. Civil work covers wings, fuselage, fairings, stabiliser, control surfaces and doors for the Pilatus PC-12 and the Daher TBM, engine pylons, wingtip fairings and inlet ducts for Dassault Falcon and Embraer business jets, and empennage, wing box, frames and machined parts for the E-Jet, E2 and Praetor families. The shops run sheet metal forming, multi-axis machining, shot peening, welding and surface treatment, and a composites plant with a 1,200 square metre cleanroom, four autoclaves and ultrasonic inspection. Around forty customers in seventy countries have used the place.