Podcast: Haite’s Chin on strategic growth, freighter conversions

Jeff Lee
Hello and welcome to this episode of cargo facts connect, the podcast of cargo facts, the newsletter of record for the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I’m Jeff Lee, editor of cargo facts and it’s Monday, the 11th of March. At the end of last week, I went up to Tianjin in northern China to see the first A321-200p2f conversion to be done and redelivered at the Haite facility there. Haite Tianjin also took the occasion to mark the ground breaking for the next phase of its expansion as well as the company’s 15th anniversary. During the event, I had a brief chat with Haite Tianjin’s general manager, Ivan Chin, about these milestones.

Jeff Lee
Ivan, we’re here in your hangar, we just finished your celebration. So first of all, congratulations on your 15th anniversary. Can you believe it’s been that long for it engine?

Ivan Chin
Oh, yes. It’s the 15 years since the establishment and 10 years of operation, and I’ve joined haite in 2018 is exactly six years for me in tianjin I come from Singapore, and I am enjoying my career shift to changing and seeing the growth of the company. So it’s a it’s a great milestone for me as well.

Jeff Lee
Great, I mean, then we just saw your first a321 EFW P to F conversion. And of course, you’ve been doing 737 7 Hundreds and 8 hundreds for IAI as well right. So, what are how important is the freighter conversion business for for Haite Tianjin?

Ivan Chin
okay, first of all for haite operations for 10 years, we have moved from light C checks progressing to Heavy C checks and an end of these tracks and cargo conversion is for this business is is a very strategic selection decision, because we need to have a mixture of work and the type of work is important to us, because in our in our in our this era, we have seasons in the maintenance, for example, during the Chinese New year’s season and during the summer period is the high peak season for airlines of Orissa loud loud period for mros. So, traditionally we will need to find work to to fill up this empty slots. So, with the cargo conversion is actually less secure a continuous flow of work regardless of whether is allowed or high period and this constant flow of work flow for us and is highly repeatable kind of processes. So our mechanics and engineers will be able to perform better and better with higher efficiencies, specializing in the particular areas that they are performing the work on. So good mixture of work plus the mixture of domestic and international work is also very important to us. Since two weeks ago, we have achieved more than 60% of our work being international. So for the conversion, it’s helped us in terms of the Lau period work and also enhances our capabilities in terms of the structure and also it brings us the confidence, our customers confident in us in terms of structural, heavy maintenance, we can perform cow conversion, they will have no resending structural, heavy maintenance to us.

Jeff Lee
That’s a good point because we’ve seen other MRO facilities now that the pandemic is behind us mostly, they’ve kind of shifted back towards other MRO work and SSI checks, as opposed to free to conversions. So the fact that you’re actually growing in this, in this segment is good news for both the conversion providers as well as the free to operators. And we were talking a bit last night, weren’t we about how it Tenjin is one of the very few sites that is doing both Airbus narrowbody and 737 energy free ticket versions.

Ivan Chin
Yes.

Jeff Lee
So we’re here today, not just to celebrate the delivery of the first a 321 P two F but also the groundbreaking for your third fees expansion. Tell me a little bit about that. Okay.

Ivan Chin
For our expansion plan, as we mentioned earlier, we are among the few mros that can concurrently perform the conversions current conversion on two different platforms, namely the A320 series and the 737 ng families of conversion that actually have a lot of this repeatable work that we are we are looking at and after the third phase expansion, that is exactly where we are looking at expansion to cater for the growth especially in the 320 321 cargo conversion market. As you know, during the COVID this the Boeing series 277. NGS they were actually posting and a lot of conversion is being done. Now they have come to a mature kind of situation and we are seeing less and less feedstock are available for conversion. So the market has come to normalize kind of situation. But however for the 320 21 is just been released in 2020. I mean, STC. So is a good market for the 320 to capture, especially, there is a natural choice for the replacement for 757. So there are still a lot of Freda operators that are very keen in the 321 especially platform For the condo conversion, so the face hanger for us is a natural expansion and growth for us to expand into this future business with the current conversion,

Jeff Lee
right and it will be the same size as the one we’re in right now.

Ivan Chin
Okay, the current size we have this three plus one is a one hanger, tree maintenance Bay and one painting. So it’s divided by the wall, but for the new hangar is exactly mirroring the three bays. So we have three additional bays with the new hangar in we should be operational by the middle of next year.

Jeff Lee
Okay, great. Well, congratulations again. And we look forward to your growth with all the free to convergence. Thanks again and thank you.

Ivan Chin
Thank you Jeff for taking time to be here. It location in Tianjin.

Jeff Lee
Thank you.

Ivan Chin
Appreciate it.

Jeff Lee
That was Ivan Chin, general manager of Haite Tianjin, joining me in Tianjin. And that’s all the time we have today. For more coverage of the freighter aircraft market, visit cargo facts.com. Thank you very much for tuning in, and join us again next time.