MAAS Aviation opens new aircraft paint shop in Kaunas

:: MAAS Aviation

Following a multi-million Euro investment, MAAS Aviation has opened a new purpose-built paint shop at Kaunas Airport (KUN), the first of its kind in Lithuania.

The modern facility is a twin-bay narrow body paint shop capable of accommodating up to two A321 sized aircraft simultaneously. The facility grows MAAS Aviation’s global footprint to eleven paint shops and increases their overall MRO capacity in Europe by 40%. All MAAS Aviation facilities are certified to EN9100, ISO9001 and ISO14001 standards and the Kaunas shop will operate to these standards from the outset.

Obviously, the location of the facility in eastern Europe is economically more profitable than in western Europe. According to Tim Macdougald, CEO of MAAS Aviation, the central/eastern European location of Kaunas was chosen as a result of several influencing factors. “It was the universal willingness of the Lithuanian authorities to bring a new industry to Lithuania” says Macdougald. “I’d particularly like to mention Invest Lithuania and the Airport Authority of Lithuania for supporting a project that spearheads the development of aviation services at Kaunas; and to FL Technics for committing to build a partnership with MAAS to combine our services with theirs for the benefit of airline and lease company customers; and to Ryanair for its continued business and trust in being our launch customer at the site.”

A new paint shop is adjacent to FL Technics’ MRO facilities, allowing to combine base maintenance, painting and parking/storage in one location, and offering “lessors a multi-specialist experience for asset transitions”.

MAAS Aviation has enjoyed significant growth over recent years to become the third largest commercial aircraft painting company in the World. In 2015 the Company had just three paint shops in two locations (two in Maastricht and one at Fokker Woensdrecht), 130 aircraft were painted, and turnover was approximately $10 million. This year MAAS will have eleven paint shops ― in addition to the aforementioned three and two new shops in Kaunas, it also has three in Hamburg and three in Mobile, Alabama. These facilities are also involved in painting new Airbus aircraft coming off the assembly lines in Hamburg and Mobile. MAAS Aviation is capable of handling up to 490 aircraft per year, and this year the organisation is forecasting painting up to 300 aircraft with turnover expected to exceed $28 million.