With more than 45 years of experience under their belt, ST Engineering has solutions for nearly every stage of an aircraft’s lifecycle — such as design and engineering, original equipment manufacturing, nose-to-tail aftermarket and maintenance services, freighter conversion solutions, as well as assets management and leasing. The company supports global fleets with a wide MRO network of facilities across the Asia Pacific, the U.S. and Europe.
“Our extensive programs in airframe, components and engines provide nose-to-tail maintenance care for aircraft with highly-customizable solutions supported by smart technologies to meet exacting needs for quality, reliability and safety,” said Jeffrey Lam, president of commercial aerospace, ST Engineering.
ST Engineering was founded in 1967, with their aerospace division coming later in 1975. Today, ST Engineering is a global technology, defense and engineering group listed in Singapore, with a diverse portfolio of businesses that spans the commercial aerospace, smart city, defense and public security segments.
“As an OEM, we specialize in engine nacelles and composite panels. With a wealth of experience in aeronautical design and the certification engineering, we also handle complex engineering projects such as passenger-to-freighter conversions, as well as cabin refurbishment and modification and provide innovative solutions in additive manufacturing for replacement and bespoke parts,” said Lam.
In addition, ST Engineering is a full-fledged aircraft and engine lessor that goes beyond traditional aircraft and engine leasing to provide total life-cycle asset management solutions. These include turnkey aircraft and cabin re-configuration services, aircraft and engine MRO and freighter conversion, added Lam.
“One of our key strengths lies in our unique and expanding role as an integrated life-cycle aviation solution provider with both MRO and OEM capabilities, and a portfolio of solutions that are diverse but yet complementary. Our OE manufacturing solutions grew greatly in 2019 with the acquisition of engine nacelle capabilities and today we are able to offer operators comprehensive solutions in a number of nacelle programs that cover both manufacturing and the aftermarket,” Lam commented.
Their close relationship with OEMs has given ST Engineering a leg up in the market. For example, in freighter conversion, ST Engineering is the only global conversion house offering Airbus freighter conversions through Supplemental Type Certificates developed using OEM data. Such support from the OEM helped lead to design solutions which have higher quality, reliability and maintainability, resulting in lower life cycle cost, noted Lam.
“Airlines know us as a trusted service provider that is able to offer bespoke customized solutions to meet their needs in a way that meets their expectations in terms of cost, quality and turn time,” Lam continued.
Investing in Technology
Lam said that one of the areas that ST Engineering has been investing in to stay ahead of the competition is smart technology. The adoption of such technology has been accelerated, in part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Although our drive towards robotics and digitization started a few years back, the pandemic has given a fresh impetus to our smart MRO initiatives so that we can be more nimble and productive in providing enhanced services and solutions to our customers. We continue to work on our digitalization initiatives by improving and building on them, and rolling out some of these projects to our various businesses across our global network of facilities,” Lam explained.
He added for at least 10 years, their airframe MRO operations in Singapore has been digital and they are now working on the next generation of digital platform facilities in Singapore, China and the U.S.
“A more scalable platform would enable an even higher level of efficiency in the flow and collection of data,” Lam said.
Another smart MRO solution that the company has adopted is DroScan, which leverages ST Engineering’s expertise in unmanned systems and engineering.
“[DroScan] uses drones to carry out General Visual Inspection for aircraft maintenance in a safe and efficient manner as compared to traditional physical inspections. We are the first in Singapore to receive authorization from Civil Aviation Authority Singapore to utilize unmanned solutions for such a purpose,” Lam said.
The use of smart technologies doesn’t end with the company’s MRO operations, however. ST Engineering aims to deploy robotics extensively in their OE manufacturing and freighter conversion operations.
“For instance, we are automating the floor grid drilling process of freighter conversion, a manual and labor-intensive job that typically takes more than 45 days. The introduction of automation helps us to keep up with the production schedules through a more efficient deployment of manpower with better quality control over desired outcomes. Currently, we have applied the automated drilling process on one of the ongoing conversion programs in Singapore. We plan to roll out this initiative to our other conversion facilities in China and Europe as we ramp up our conversion capacity,” Lam explained.
Eye on the Future
Of course, like the rest of the aviation industry, ST Engineering has felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As with many other MRO providers, we have to mitigate the impact of the drastic drop in flying activities. We did this by implementing a slew of measures, from addressing our manpower and operational capacity; to accelerating the adoption of smart technologies as part of an overall effort to drive greater productivity efficiency. Most of all, we focused our efforts on supporting our customers through a difficult time, including rescheduling work, reorganizing debt and providing solutions that help airlines return to flying — such as certifying passenger aircraft cabin to carry freight, and clean cabin solutions,” said Lam.
A diverse portfolio of customers in the airframe MRO business has helped the company, which include air freight operators, as well as broad service offerings from design and engineering to passenger-to-freighter conversion. It’s been a silver lining during the pandemic, Lam noted.
“In fact, the growing demand is outstripping our existing capacity, and we have been steadily ramping up our capacity by setting up new conversion lines across our global facilities to meet that demand,” he continued.
Lam said that they are seeing signs of recovery in the industry from the pandemic, though notes that it is currently still uneven across the globe.
“Global recovery of the aviation sector is still unsteady and uneven due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases across a number of regions. An international framework for travel has yet to be fully established and many international borders remain closed. All these will continue to pose challenges for the travel and MRO industry in the short term. We are hopeful that as more people get vaccinated in the coming months, we will see travel protocols being established across the world to enable people to travel safely and easily. For now, we are focusing on supporting our customers wherever we can and in creative ways by rescheduling work, reworking payment plans and re-customizing lease arrangements,” Lam said.
Lam said that ST Engineering remains “very positive” about the industry’s growth and prospects. They are continuing to build up their MRO capabilities in airframe, component and engine even during this period as part of our long-term strategic to achieve growth, he noted.
“We recently commenced our construction of an MRO complex in Pensacola which will add to our capacity and network in the North America region by adding another three hangars when completed. We continue to build on our core competencies. For instance, we are setting up quick turn services for LEAP-1B engines by the end of this year and developing new MRO capabilities for Honeywell LEAP engine components,” he continued.
Outside of their MRO business, ST Engineering is also seeing growth in their passenger-to-freighter conversion operations, which has been facing strong demand thanks to factors such as the e-commerce industry and drop in passenger aircraft bellyhold cargo capacity during the pandemic.
“To further capture the growing demand for dedicated freighter aircraft, we are in the process of setting up a freighter leasing joint venture that will have a portfolio comprising highly efficient converted freighters. Through this new venture, we will address the growing demand for freighter aircraft as e-commerce and air cargo volumes expand across the globe, while at the same time leverage our deep technical expertise to provide end-to-end solutions including entry to service, deployment and maintenance,” Lam said.
The need for and airlines recognizing the importance of dedicated is a trend that Lam said emerged during the pandemic.
“With e-commerce going strong, air freight has helped to fill the gaps in flying activities when air travel plunged to a low. As a freighter conversion house, we have seen huge interest from the airlines to add dedicated freighters to their fleet, while some have modified their aircraft temporarily to carry just air cargo,” he said.
Looking ahead, Lam said that ST Engineering will continue to grow their OEM and MRO capabilities.
“We will continue to strengthen our core MRO capabilities by maintaining a lookout for opportunities to acquire new strategic capabilities, gain better access to key markets and establish new distribution channels or new customer segments,” Lam explained. “At the same time, we will also look for opportunities to move into adjacencies or upstream in areas that focus on intellectual property investment so that we can develop even more integrated and comprehensive solutions.
“Aviation asset management is one such new area of growth we will be focusing on, which bring together our different expertise including financing, lease management, MRO and aircraft modification," Lam continued. "As we expand our hangar footprint across the world, we are also developing new nacelle MRO capabilities to provide more options to customers. Our drone solutions are also proving new applications in surveillance, inspection, security and delivery. We believe that customers will better appreciate solutions with total life cycle services that allow them to concentrate on their core operations and businesses.”
