Abu Dhabi’s Sanad Aerotech seals $6.5bn Rolls-Royce engine repair contract

A wholly-owned unit of Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala, on Monday, sealed a $6.5bn deal with Rolls-Royce for Trent 700 engine maintenance, tripling the number of those engines it services annually.

Sanad Aerotech, previously Mubadala Aerospace Turbine Services & Solutions (TS&S), will provide overhaul services for Trent 700 engines until 2027 under the deal. It will also become a Rolls-Royce Trent 700 Authorised Maintenance Centre.

“It really is a significant testament to how business has evolved over the last 30 years. Sanad today is a not a regional MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) supplier but a global one,” Sanad chief executive Mansoor Janahi told Reuters.

“We are looking at focusing more on investing in new technologies that will support our growth story.”

Sanad will now annually service 75 Trent 700 engines, which are used to power Airbus A330 jets, up from the 22 it currently services a year. It had provided MRO services to Trent 700 engines under a previous agreement.

The Abu Dhabi-based MRO has overhauled 90 Trent 700 engines since it started the job in 2013 and this will jump to over 600 over the new contract period.

Its workforce will increase by over 40 per cent to almost 500 aircraft engineers and technicians to meet the new workload.