Engine Manufacturing, Repair Growth Aspirations For ITP Aero

FORT WORTH—“ITP Aero is one of the best kept secrets,” but the company’s CEO Eva Azoulay hopes that will not be the case for much longer.

ITP was founded 35 years ago as a national engine provider for the Eurofighter. But in September 2022, it became an independent design, manufacturing and services company following Rolls-Royce’s sale of the company to a group of investors led by Bain Capital for €1.6 billion (US$1.7 billion).

That enabled ITP to think about the broader industry and leverage its capabilities across a portfolio of Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, GE Aerospace and Honeywell engines in commercial, business aviation and defense. Its main products include fan and booster modules, high-pressure compressor, combustor, low-pressure turbines and hot structures on fixed-and rotor-wing aircraft.

“We like to say that every six minutes, an ITP-powered [commercial] engine takes off around the world,” says Azoulay, speaking at Aviation Week Network’s Aero-Engine Americas. “That’s 5,000 engines that have an ITP aero module in them.”

It’s also the Spanish representative on “all the major European consortiums—EJ200 [Eurofighter engine] and [Europrop International] TP400—and also a major player on the new fighter FCAS program,” Azoulay says.

ITP Aero’s business split is about 70% civil aviation, 15% defense and 15% MRO. Azoulay says growth in the next five years will come from a combination of organic capability and “inorganic, whether it’s M&A or whether it’s creating or investing in new licenses.”

For MRO, “we have a long-term aspiration to have it reflect about one-quarter of sales,” she says. When asked for a definition of “long term,” she did not specify it but says, “we expect MRO to be a significant component of our business as a whole, but it’s a multi-step approach, and we’re working all of the different lanes.”

While ITP hasn’t disclosed its 2024 revenue yet, ITP’s CEO says its revenue grew by double digits year-over-year and she expects double-digit growth in 2025, as well. Its 2023 revenue was €1.31 billion.

In the last two years, ITP Aero has made several steps to diversify and has invested more than $100 million in capital.

It purchased BP Aero in Dallas, its first company in the U.S., in early 2024. BP Aero provides engine hospital shop visits, field service repairs, engine teardowns and parts repair. Expect BP Aero to continue adding new capabilities and capacity as part of the company’s growth strategy.

It also added a new castings production and logistics facility at its site in Queretaro, Mexico. That facility also has test cell availability, a capability in great demand today due to the volume of current and next-gen engines that need servicing. “We’re looking at how to leverage that capacity on large commercial [engines],” Azoulay says.

About 20-25% of its 6,000 employees are engineers, and it operates out of 14 sites in five countries.

She sees opportunity to leverage ITP’s large engineering staff to develop more engine repairs, which could help decrease engine service turnaround times that have lengthened in part due to the industry’s supply chain shortages.

“We really see an incredible opportunity to transition and bring that capacity to market,” she says.

That effort will be buoyed in February when ITP Aero plans to open an Advanced Manufacturing Aerospace Center in Spain designed to accelerate additive manufacturing, simulations, repairs and digitalization.