Ambitious plans for an aerospace business park in Wales are in tatters after the Government announced the closure of a Defence Aviation Repair Agency (Dara) fast-jet site at St Athan.
The closure was announced just three years after Dara, which occupies 100 acres of the South Wales-site, began the construction of a 765,000 sq ft maintenance hangar to service Harrier and Tornado jets.
Ahead of the hangar’s opening earlier this year, the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) purchased a total of 823-acres from the MoD for a new aerospace park.
The WDA said at the time that the fact it would be anchored by the giant Dara facility would help attract further occupiers.
No occupiers, however, have come forward to take any space at the site, which is about 15 miles west of Cardiff.
The Government said on Tuesday the RAF’s 69 Harriers would in future be serviced at RAF Cottesmore in Rutland and work on its 139 Tornadoes would be transferred from South Wales to RAF Marham in Norfolk in four years.
Campaigners fear St Athan as a whole may no longer be viable without the Tornado work.
Dara’s engine maintenance business in Fleetlands, Hampshire, will also be shut with 225 jobs going by March 2007.
A further 1,226 jobs are being axed at Army vehicle repair service, Abro, with 628 of them going in Shropshire.
Abro will be closing its armoured vehicle and engine facilities at Donnington by March 2007.
Its “one-stop shops” at Warminster, Wiltshire, and Colchester, Essex, will also close by March 2007 with up to 281 redundancies, the minister told MPs.
The WDA did not comment.
References: EGi News 09/11/05
