Arlene Foster, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment and Gary Montgomery, CEO of Thompson Aero Seating Ltd
Manufacturing company to create 85 jobs in Portadown
by Tina Costanza
Thompson Aero Seating Limited, a designer and manufacturer of business class seats for the commercial airline sector, is to create 85 manufacturing jobs in Portadown, Co Armagh, as part of a stg£10m investment.
Invest NI has offered Thompson Aero Seating stg£1.7m to support the creation of the new jobs, which will help the company meet increasing demand for the seats.
Gary Montgomery, CEO of Thompson Aero Seating Ltd, said the company's latest expansion will help it capitalise on the expected doubling of air traffic in the next 15 years.
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"Our target is to grow sales of our patented seating concepts by over stg£40m in the next two years and with an already very strong order book confirmed, we are well positioned to achieve this objective," he said.
Arlene Foster, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, said Northern Ireland's aerospace sector is growing year-on-year and the 85 new jobs will generate stg£3.5m annually in salaries for the local economy.
Thompson Aero Seating Ltd has three sites in the Portadown area and currently employs 137 people.
Related: manufacturing, Armagh, jobs announcements, Northern Ireland, Invest NI
Tina Costanza came to Ireland from Canada, where she had held senior editorial positions at daily newspapers in Ottawa and Toronto. When she wasn't saving dangling participles or managing production at Siliconrepublic.com, she was training for 10K races or satisfying a craving for scones. She left the company in April 2015 in order to return to her native Canada.