INDIANAPOLIS – Rolls-Royce is celebrating the completion of a decade-long, $1 billion investment into its Indiana operations — an investment the aircraft engine-maker said puts it in a good position to fulfill existing military contracts and compete for new work in the future.
At its Tibbs Avenue facility on the west side of Indianapolis on Thursday, Rolls-Royce hosted a gathering of several hundred people, including employees, company executives, elected officials, military leaders and others, to mark the occasion.
Among the VIPs attending were Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, U.S. Sen. Jim Banks and U.S. Reps Victoria Spartz, Jefferson Shreve, Andre Carson, Erin Houchin and Marlin Stutzman.
The investment, which was first announced in 2015, was completed in two phases. The most recent work, which wrapped up this year, involved updating Rolls-Royce’s engine testing facilities in both Indianapolis and West Lafayette.
This most recent phase represented a $400 million investment, half of which was in Indianapolis and half of which was at the West Lafayette testing facility that Rolls-Royce operates in partnership with Purdue University.
In 2021, Rolls-Royce marked the completion of the first phase of the project, a $600 million investment that included a $400 million modernization of the company’s Raymond Street and Tibbs Avenue manufacturing equipment and facilities — some of which dated to the 1940s. That first phase also included $200 million in technology research.
“We’ve invested in the capability and the capacity to do what the Department of War needs today — and tomorrow,” Rolls-Royce Defense Manufacturing Operations Director Warren White told reporters during a site tour Thursday afternoon.
Rolls-Royce’s Indianapolis operations, which employ more than 3,500 people, are focused on making engines for military aircraft: Roughly 80% of the United Kingdom-based company’s U.S. defense workforce is in Indianapolis.
Rolls-Royce also said it has more than 100 advanced manufacturing and testing jobs that it is currently working to fill in Indianapolis.
Candice Bineyard, Rolls-Royce’s Indianapolis-based director of U.S. defense business development, future programs and North American government relations, described the $1 billion investment as one that was pivotal for the Indianapolis site.
In 2014, Bineyard said, Rolls-Royce’s Indianapolis operations were at a critical juncture.
“We weren’t where we needed to be on costs or productivity and we knew that if we didn’t invest, we would slowly become a company that just serviced and sold spares of the engines we built in the past, with no real future here,” Bineyard said of the choice that faced Rolls-Royce’s leadership eight years ago. “So the choice was simple, yet challenging, to make: Invest in Indianapolis, compete for what comes next, or manage a slow decline. Live in the past or invest in the future. We chose to invest.”
The completion of the $1 billion in upgrades comes as Rolls-Royce is working to fulfill some major military contracts it has won over the past few years.
That work includes a contract to produce replacement engines for the U.S. Air Force’s B-52 fleet. That contract, in which Rolls-Royce will produce 653 F130 engines over a multiyear period, could be worth up to $2.6 billion.
Rolls-Royce was awarded that contract in 2021. The company says it has completed design work for the F130s and is doing testing now, with the goal of beginning production of those engines next year.
Rolls-Royce is also building the engines for Rhode Island-based Bell Textron Inc.’s V-280 Valor aircraft that Bell Textron is building for the U.S. Army. Bell Textron won that military contract in 2022.
Rolls-Royce has not disclosed how many engines it expects to make for the V-280s, nor how much money it might earn from that contract.