AN Ayrshire business that designs and builds sections of wings for jet liners has won this year's Scottish Engineering award.
Prestwick-based Spirit Aerosystems won recognition for the work it has done on developing and producing parts used on the latest generation of planes made by industry leaders such as Airbus and Boeing.
US-owned Spirit employs around 1,000 people in Prestwick, which is a global research and development centre for the group.
The Prestwick operation forms an important part of the aerospace sector in Ayrshire, one of the drivers of the area's economy.
The Scottish Engineering Award is intended to highlight a manufacturing engineering supply company working in Scotland that judges believe has made a significant contribution towards raising the standard of the sector.
Bryan Buchan, chief executive of Scottish Engineering said of Spirit Aerosystems: "In this worthy winner we have a company which is not only highly successful in the here and now but is an active contributor to shaping the future of commercial aircraft through their R&D and design capability."
Past winners of the Scottish Engineering Award include Alexander Dennis, the Falkirk bus builder and Aberdeen oil services giant Wood Group.
Six companies won President's Awards for manufacturing excellence this year. They were: FMC Technologies based in Dunfermline; Hydrasun Limited of Aberdeen; CBC Electric Machines, formerly known as Parsons Peebles, from Rosyth; Peak Scientific Instruments based in Renfrew; SPX Corporation from Glasgow and Doosan Babcock from Renfrew.
Douglas Osborne of Thales Optronics of Glasgow won the Scottish Engineering/Incorporation of Hammermen Award for a young graduate engineer.
The awards were presented at a dinner in Glasgow to mark the 150th anniversary of Scottish Engineering.
The Spirit Aerospace operation in Prestwick developed out of the BAE Systems Aerostructures business that the US firm acquired in 2006.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article