(Nov 8): Boeing Co is ploughing more than US$1 billion into its 787 Dreamliner factory complex in South Carolina, aiming to double monthly production as sales surge for its advanced widebody jet.
The investment in the state, where Boeing’s 8,200 workers are not unionised, will create more than 1,000 jobs over five years, according to the company. It comes as a strike by factory workers at Boeing’s defence hub in Missouri reaches its 96th day.
Boeing has seen sales surge for the 787, especially as US President Donald Trump makes aircraft purchases by the US plane-maker a key pillar of his trade negotiations. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive officer, presented Trump with a “salesman of the year” award at an event at the Oval Office last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in Charleston on Friday.
Officials including Bessent and South Carolina governor Henry McMaster attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion on Friday, which will roughly double Boeing’s manufacturing campus adjacent to Charleston International Airport.
The latest investment will bring the plane-maker’s total spending on the facilities to around US$3.5 billion over more than 15 years.
After the new assembly lines open in 2028, Boeing will have monthly capacity to build around 16 of its carbon-fibre Dreamliners, a record manufacturing rate for widebody jets. That would be double the company’s current pace and about two jets a month more than Boeing’s previous peak production for the model in 2019.
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The rapid expansion will test Boeing’s quality control in South Carolina, the center of Dreamliner production, where the company has struggled at times. The plane-maker still has 10 Dreamliners remaining out of 120 planes that required nose-to-tail inspections and repairs for tiny structural imperfections.
And the risk outside its factory walls is even greater.
Boeing is competing for parts and raw goods such as titanium at a time when rival Airbus SE and other defence and space contractors are ramping up output. That competition for resources introduces risk beyond the US industrial giant’s control as it tries to convert record order backlogs for its two main sources of cash: the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner.
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“You’ve got the company carried by these two hugely important programmes,” said Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, a consulting firm. “It’s perfectly sensible for them to ramp up and bring in cash. But ultimately they are at the mercy of their supply chain, like everyone else in the aerospace world.”
Boeing plans to start staffing for the new manufacturing lines next summer so mechanics will have about a year of training before the expansion comes online. The company is also hiring engineers, quality inspectors and logistics personnel to support the new operation, said Caroline Hilton McDougal, the director of 787 final assembly operations.
While Trump has helped Boeing land a slew of orders for the 787, emerging as the company’s most influential booster, he has needled officials about the tardy presidential jets that the government ordered during his first term and are years behind schedule.
When Bessent told Trump on Thursday that he was heading to Boeing’s 787 factory, the Treasury Secretary asked Trump if he had a message for Boeing. Trump’s reply, according to Bessent: “Tell them they owe me two Air Force Ones.”
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