With the ceremonial turn of the shovels, Swiss business jet manufacturer PIlatus Aircraft on Jan. 23 marked the start of construction of Phase 1 of its sales, service and manufacturing facilities at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.
The $60 million, 71,000-square-foot first phase, which will house its sales operations, will take approximately 18 months to complete. By the time the total project is finished, Pilatus CEO Markus Bucher told the groundbreaking audience the investment could reach upwards of $200 million.
Pilatus Aircraft currently assembles all of its planes at its Stans, Switzerland headquarters. Plans are to assemble the company’s PC-24 twin-engine business jet at SRQ once its Phase 2 assembly plant is completed. The base price of a PC-24 just less than $11 million and typically costs upwards of $12 million to $14 million.
“This be the very first time Pilatus is going to build airplanes outside of Switzerland,” Bucher said at the groundbreaking. “We started thinking about a U.S. strategy about three years ago, and very early on we learned that the wealth is moving out of California and into Florida. So Florida, from a Pilatus point of view, is the second most important state where business aviation is happening.”…