Beaudet Aviation, a subsidiary of JCB Aero of Toulouse, France, plans to hire 75 workers at a facility near the Little Rock Port to work with Dassault Falcon Jet, the chairman of Beaudet said Wednesday.
JCB makes and modifies aircraft cabin interiors, upgrades in-flight entertainment systems and refurbishes cabins. Beaudet will supply Dassault with completion work for its Falcon business jets.
Dassault Falcon is undergoing a $60 million expansion and upgrade at its completions plant at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field. JCB Aero does completion work for Dassault Falcon in France.
"Dassault Falcon Jet generously provided us with the expertise and knowledge of the American market, both in recruiting and in vision for the future," Jean-Claude Beaudet, chairman of JCB Aero, said through an interpreter. "Our close collaboration [with Dassault], based on mutual trust, led to the establishment of a partnership."
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette first reported in June that Beaudet Aviation intended to open a plant in the Little Rock area.
Work to modify a former L'Oreal distribution center at 6001 Lindsey Road has already started. Beaudet is spending $2.5 million to renovate the facility, which is south of the airport. L'Oreal, also a French company, has a manufacturing plant in North Little Rock.
Beaudet, who founded JCB Aero in 1987, said he expects work for Dassault to begin as early as the first week of October. The company has already hired about a dozen workers, he said. The company will pay employees between $10 and $30 an hour, with good benefits, Beaudet said.
The firm anticipates having 150 to 200 employees within five years, Beaudet said. It expects to expand gradually and eventually build its own hangar at the airport to accommodate wide-body jets such as the Boeing 777.
"In the long-run, we would like to create the exact duplication of the company based in France or even bigger," Beaudet said in a statement.
Aviation products are the top value-added export in Arkansas, Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday at a news conference where the project was announced.
Arkansas is providing Beaudet with tax incentives for which most major new businesses qualify -- an income tax credit based on the payroll of new jobs, and sales-tax refunds on building materials, taxable machinery and equipment associated with the project. The state will also help pay for the training of workers if Beaudet needs that, said Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.
Beaudet Aviation had been thinking about locating a plant in the United States, possibly in Florida, when executives with Dassault suggested that the company consider Little Rock, Beaudet said.
Beebe joined Grant Tennille, executive director of the commission, other representatives from the commission, along with Ron Mathieu, executive director of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, on a trip to England and Europe in July to promote Arkansas locations to prospective aviation companies.
Landing the Beaudet facility adds credibility to Arkansas for international businesses that are considering locations in the United States, Hardin said in an interview.
"It may not close the deal, but it gets us one step further in the process," Hardin said. "And Beaudet had that level of comfort in Arkansas based on the fact that Dassault was located here."
A Section on 09/18/2014