At face value, Rolls-Royce’s recent establishment of new facilities in Singapore, the U.S. and Germany might be construed as the group’s snubbing its UK home and a possible indictment of successive British governments that some say have failed to nurture the country’s aerospace industry. But that’s not how Ian Godden, chief executive of the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC), views the engine maker’s decision to move operations offshore. He told AIN he’d be more concerned if firms like Rolls-Royce failed to respond to market imperatives to have “a global footprint.”
The continued weakness of the U.S. dollar on international currency markets has increased pressure on British companies to shift a greater proportion of their expenses to lower-cost economies. Historically, British governments–unlike some of their European counterparts–have had a laissez-faire attitude toward moving aerospace jobs overseas, which has meant UK firms have been expanding on other continents since the 1980s.
