Canadair Factory: Size & Future of Montreal’s Bomber Plant

What if the former Canadair factory was no longer too spacious for Bombardier? Formerly on the aircraft manufacturer’s list of priorities to replenish its coffers, the sale of part of the most emblematic aeronautical complex in the province seems to have been relegated to the bottom of the pile.

Let’s go back to the beginning of 2021 to better understand the matter.

The private jet maker is at the heart of its recovery at the time. The capacity of its factories is greater than demand and the financial balance sheet must be restored. To achieve this, the president and CEO, Éric Martel, plans to sell part of the 4 million square feet of land located in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent.

Five years later, it is the status quo on this issue. However, many things have changed elsewhere at the Quebec manufacturer. The takeoff in demand in business aviation – to levels that few experts predicted – is forcing the company to accelerate its production rate while the value of its order book was close to US$17 billion as of September 30.

Added to this is the enthusiasm for the defense sector, which is reflected in a growing number of orders for business jets converted into surveillance aircraft, in particular.

“There is no urgency to sell parts of the factory, but it is my job to continue to optimize the ways of doing things,” explained to The Press Bombardier’s executive vice-president of manufacturing, David Murray, Thursday, on the sidelines of the announcement of a new center in Dorval. We brought several thousand pieces from outside to the Saint-Laurent center, so the center is super important for us. »

In the summer of 2021, Bombardier had 1,200 employees in this building whose facade is located on Boulevard Marcel-Laurin, a number which has continued to grow since – the company no longer provides an estimate. The location specializes in manufacturing parts and components that supply the company’s other locations.

We are still far from one of the initial scenarios envisaged by Bombardier. The Press had already revealed, thanks to an internal presentation from 2020 that we obtained, that the business jet maker wanted to keep only 40% of the land on which the Canadair factory is located in a process that should have been completed around 2024.

Regarding the factory, we wanted to occupy 880,000 square feet of the current area of 1.4 million square feet.

A sign of the seriousness of the approach, in the summer of 2021, the borough of Saint-Laurent had even adopted a regulation to allow the multinational to subdivide its site into distinct lots to sell them separately. Previously, the land of the former Canadair factory was only one lot.

Upcoming work

Formerly considered too spacious, the emblematic complex now seems a tool on which the multinational is banking to build more devices from 2028.

A memorandum of understanding reached last October between the company and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers that we were able to consult offers a foretaste.

“Bombardier is committed to repatriating [à Saint-Laurent] some body activities [la structure principale d’un avion] central and rear in order to diversify assembly activities, which will have a positive impact on the number of employees,” the document underlined.

In other words, even more work is coming inside the facility in a few years.

“The strategy seems to have changed,” agrees John Gradek, an aviation expert and lecturer at McGill University. If Bombardier’s finances had been as strong in 2021, would we have wanted to reduce the industrial footprint inside the Canadair factory? The question arises. »