After the positive vote of the citizens of Glarus North at the municipal assembly last November, the Kopter Group is starting its next expansion step. It has commissioned architect Dima & Partner, based in Glarus, with the design, planning and construction of a new 215,280-square-foot (20,000-square-meter) building for its pre-assembly activities at the Mollis airfield. Dima & Partner emerged as the winner of Kopter’s call for tender with its project proposal.
The detailed design and planning of this new building will be completed in summer 2019, with the construction due to start in autumn of the same year. After moving into the new building in 2021, Kopter will have the necessary capacities for ramping-up the production of its SH09, a new generation helicopter for the worldwide markets.
The new building is planned for manufacturing and pre-assembly and will include the production of dynamic components such as rotor blades, gearboxes and rotor heads. Testing rigs and a central warehouse will also be located at this site. Kopter already owns an existing building of 45,210 square feet (4,200 square meters) at the Mollis airfield, which will then host the final assembly lines and administrative functions.
This new facility will establish the Mollis site as Kopter’s company-wide competence center for production, assembly, flight-testing, training and maintenance for the SH09.
Andreas Löwenstein, CEO of the Kopter Group, commented: “We are very pleased with the appointment of Dima & Partner, a well-known local partner with national and international standing, to build our new, state-of-the-art facility, which will allow us to work in the best conditions and to serve our customers worldwide.”
The Kopter Group expects to achieve an annual production rate of 50 helicopters in Mollis in the next five years, which will lead to an increase in the number of employees from 100 today to around 400. In addition, the site will manufacture up to 150 further prefabricated sets of subassemblies that will be supplied to the final assembly facilities planned in the U.S. and Asia.
