Piper Aircraft, Inc. recently completed a major upgrade to the company’s aircraft painting facilities at its Vero Beach manufacturing campus and world headquarters.

“The upgrades give us state-of-the-art paint and sanding booth systems to improve the quality and durability of our paint finishes on new aircraft while also providing a safer work environment for our Vero Beach employees,” said Piper President and CEO Simon Caldecott.

The company added a new Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) dust containment system in the sanding booth and a state of the art PLC controlled paint booth system. Piper and its employees relied on the support of eight local companies, the city of Vero Beach and several offices of Indian River County to complete the construction project.

The sanding booth improvements included temperature control to improve quality and employee safety and comfort, self-cleaning dust particle filters to maximize the life of the filters and reduce the amount of disposed used filter media and a recirculation and filtration system that increases the efficiency of the heating/cooling and decreases exhaust by 80 percent.

The paint booth enhancements included a continuously monitored temperature and humidity controlled system to ensure the optimal paint application conditions and paint cure time, a new re-circulating filtration system that maximizes heating/cooling efficiency by re-circulating 80 percent of the air. The system also monitors and maintains positive room pressure to insure that no dust particles enter the booth, temperature, humidity and pressure control, and a four-stage air filtration system provides the ideal environment to produce the best quality paint job.

“The total value of the enhancements to our paint capabilities was in excess of $850,000, with more than $450,000 in work going to local Florida companies for installation and building upgrades and $400,000 in new equipment to American suppliers,” he added.

Piper’s assets in Indian River County exceed $52 million and its payroll for the past four years exceeded $40 million annually. Piper spends an average of more than $20 million annually with Florida suppliers, $2 million in utility payments and $365,000 in yearly property and tangible taxes. Its facilities serve the community as a state-designated emergency staging area in case of hurricanes or other disasters.

 

About Piper Aircraft

Piper Aircraft, Inc. is headquartered in Vero Beach, Florida. A global force in aviation, Piper is an investment of the Ministry of Finance of the Government of Brunei. The company offers efficient single-engine and twin-engine trainer, personal and business aircraft. With economical acquisition and operating costs, Piper airplanes deliver the best value available today and into the future. Piper is a member of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

 

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Piper Aircraft

For further information, contact:
Jackie Carlon
Phone: (772) 299-2900
Fax: (772) 978-6585
Mail to: Jackie.Carlon@piper.com
piper.com