Boeing, the giant Chicago-headquartered airplane maker, has opened an office in Kyiv after launching a corporate design center in November 2013. Previously, company has been doing all its business in this part of the world through its Moscow office.
Boeing
Ukraine has its own goals and tasks, company’s spokeswoman in Moscow Elena
Alexandrova told
RBC, a business news agency, on Oct. 21. Currently it employs 150 people with
plans to expand staff to 400 by the year’s end.
The Kyiv-based
design center of a company, whose planes are popular with local airlines, is
hiring the engineers, making offers to those currently employed in Boeing’s
Russian branch.
“There are lots of talented, highly qualified specialists
among the Ukrainian engineers,” Alexandrova said. “(Decision to
launch a research & development center in Ukraine) was made as a part of
the global strategy to increase the competitiveness and provide the
opportunities for future growth (of the company).”
National Aviation University in
Kyiv remains a popular educational hub for applicants from the emerging markets
seeking for learning the aircraft technology. As of now, 1,200 foreign students
are enrolled in various programs, while overall student community exceeds
50,000.
Part
of the work on projecting the airplane components has been transferred from
Moscow to Kyiv due to lower production costs in Ukraine, which is why Russian
engineers are holding technological workshops for their Ukrainian counterparts
in Kyiv, according to RBC.
Ukraine
International Airlines, biggest local air travel company, has 32
Boeings among 37 planes in its transportation portfolio.
Airbuses are main rivals for Boeings in Ukraine. For instance, rather small
Windrose has only three planes on its list, all Airbuses.
Wizzair Ukraine, a low cost with a parent company in Hungary, operates only
Airbuses too.
Boeing
737-800, a flagship carrier with 186 seats, costs $93.3
million, while Airbus A320 goes pretty much for the same
price – $93.9
million and usually has 150 seats, though some modifications
have 180 seats.
Boeing’s
net
earnings in six months this year grew by 19 percent
year-on-year and reached $2.6 billion.
Running
the Ukrainian part of the business through an office in Moscow is a usual
strategy for the global companies. “In order to negotiate over opening the
Apple Store in Ukraine we have to deal with Apple’s Moscow office,” Vitaliy
Boyko, partner at Ukrainian Trade Guild consultancy, told the Kyiv Post.
Meanwhile,
American clothing producer Abercrombie & Fitch is currently testing the
Russian market before making a decision on whether it’s worth to enter Ukraine.
However, Boeing decided to go a different way.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can
be reached at [email protected].
