Quickstep Holdings

Quickstep manufactures carbon fibre composite structures for aircraft, and its customer list reads as a short summary of Western military aviation. The group works from a 16,000 square metre plant at Bankstown Airport in Sydney, a manufacturing and process development site at Waurn Ponds near Geelong, and an aftermarket services business at Melbourne Airport. It traded on the ASX for two decades before ASDAM Operations, majority owned by funds managed by CPE Capital, took it private through a scheme of arrangement implemented in May 2025. That put Quickstep into a group alongside Marand, TAE Aerospace, Rosebank Engineering, Levett Engineering and Oldham Engineering.

Advanced manufacturing is the core of it. For the F-35 Lightning II, Quickstep supplies Northrop Grumman with 21 fuselage components including doors, panels and skins, and separately produces vertical tail spars, skins and fairings that go to Marand for assembly and on to BAE Systems. It is the sole supplier to Lockheed Martin of composite wing flaps for the C-130J Super Hercules and the commercial LM-100J. A newer line makes composite countermeasure flare housings for Chemring Australia, funded through the F-35 Joint Program Office, on an automated cell that uses collaborative robots for cutting, lay-up and sub-assembly.

Engineering services cover CAD and CAM design in CATIA and DELMIA, tooling, precision five-axis milling, non-destructive testing, and a materials and processes laboratory approved by Lockheed Martin. Autoclave and thermal processing, laser ply projection and automated ply cutting sit inside more than 2,200 square metres of temperature and humidity controlled clean room. Research and development is a real segment here rather than a line item, because the company took its name from its own process. The Quickstep Process cures carbon fibre and resin using heated liquid instead of an autoclave, moving heat far faster, and the Qure technology developed at Waurn Ponds carried that idea up to aerospace grade. Resin Spray Transfer, a related development, was aimed at automotive production volumes.

Aftermarket services form the fourth segment. Quickstep Aerospace Services, opened in 2021 at Melbourne Airport, repairs composite and metal-bonded structures as well as conventional metal aircraft parts and mechanical components for both commercial and defence operators. Group revenue sits around A$67 million. For a business that size the qualification load is heavy, running from AS9100 and ISO 9001 accreditation through to program-specific approvals from Northrop Grumman first granted in 2011. Defence aerospace and commercial aerospace are treated as separate markets, and the commercial side gives the plant something to build when a military production lot pauses. Work of this kind moves slowly, and a supplier that qualifies for a fighter fuselage component tends to hold it for the life of the program. That is the whole business model.