(Bloomberg) -- Daher SA, a closely held French aircraft and equipment maker, is in the final stages of buying an assembly plant in Florida from Triumph Group Inc. as part of a U.S. expansion.

The aerospace structures site at Stuart, on the Atlantic coast, will bolster Daher’s production capacity in the country and widen its customer base, the manufacturer said in a statement Wednesday, without disclosing the terms of the transaction.

The factory supplies Boeing Co. and Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. and generates sales of 200 million euros ($226 million) a year, Daher Chief Executive Officer Didier Kayat told reporters in Paris. The deal will see the group’s U.S. business account for about 40% of total revenue, which surpassed 1.1 billion euros last year, he said. 

The deal comes as aviation suppliers plot a nascent recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, which saw orders slump as most carriers were forced to ground their fleets. Family-controlled Daher relied on French state-backed loans to weather the crisis, but is now scouting for growth opportunities, Kayat said. Daher has already looked at about a dozen potential targets over the past year, he said.

“We will be among the consolidators,” the CEO said.

Triumph said last year it was in talks with several parties about selling the Stuart factory as part of a move away from the structures sector. The Berwyn, Pennsylvania-based air-parts manufacturer sees that market as a smaller component of the overall business, CEO Daniel J. Crowley said in November.

Turboprop Deliveries

Daher is expecting to deliver 85 turboprops in 2022, up from 68 in 2021 when its stocks went down to zero, Kayat said. These include the TBM and Kodiak families of aircraft. 

Daher generates about a quarter of its revenue from Airbus SE, supplying parts for models including the A350 and A330, along with Boeing’s Dreamliner. 

The company is majority-owned and managed by the founding family -- with Patrick Daher as chairman -- and can trace its roots to Marseille shipping in 1863. 

The family’s Sogemarco-Daher holding owns 87.1%, while French investment fund BPI France has 12.5%, according to its website.

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