________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
aluminum and key processes are bending, forming, machining, polishing, brazing, welding and a variety of NDT testing, surface treatment and heat treatment processes. We are AS 9100 REV D and Nadcap approved for special processes as well as holding a wide variety of customer-specific approvals.”
Steady growth
As a business focused on commercial aviation, Sigma was significantly impacted by the pandemic as the supply chains serving the aircraft OEMs ground to a halt overnight.“ 2020 was the start of the problem,” Richard shares,“ and we reacted in the same way as many suppliers in the sector and had to trim our capacity, cut costs, and preserve cash. We felt we had to be aggressive in doing this as there was so much uncertainty during 2020 and 2021. We all believed that the underlying demand would always be there for commercial air travel, it was just a case of when it would come back. We had to make sure we preserved a viable business for when the recovery came.”
Since 2021, Sigma has grown steadily, as supply chains and OEM build rates have recovered but as was the case for many other suppliers, the company was challenged in terms of material prices and availability and
... we supply products to Airbus A220, Airbus A350, Business Jet and some military aircraft the ability to simply recruit the right people to support the returning demand.“ A lot of skilled people were taken out of the industry at the height of the pandemic and then suddenly the whole sector was looking to recruit skilled people to support the ramp-up and it’ s probably only in the last 18 months or so that things have got a little easier in that respect.
“ Alongside this, we have also worked very hard to acquire new business and secure new customers, but we have stuck to the aerospace sector as that’ s what we are good at. We are happy with where we are now as activity in the sector has recovered to prepandemic levels and beyond in some cases and the outlook is very positive but ultimately, the whole industry has missed out on four-tofive years’ growth,” he explains.
Three segments
Sigma’ s business is segmented into three parts. As the name suggests, the Airframe segment comprises parts that go on to a variety of aircraft airframes, servicing both the defense and civil aviation sectors.“ The parts are quite varied,” Richard adds,“ requiring bending, pressing, fabrication and a fair degree of hand-working as well as a variety of heat and surface treatments. Airframe represents around 30 percent of Sigma’ s business today and we supply products to Airbus A220, Airbus A350, Business Jet and some military aircraft.“ Our second segment is Power & Systems. This is defined as any product that we are supplying for fitment to the aircraft engine or engine nacelle. Power & Systems is about 60 percent of our business and is almost all supplied into the commercial aviation market, supporting engines on Airbus A320, A350 and Boeing 737 amongst others.
◀ Richard Bower
56