Airbus Helicopters has delivered an angry response to the Polish government and its rivals accusing them of spreading “misleading allegations” over the collapse of a multi-billion dollar order for multirole helicopters.

Warsaw at the beginning of October announced that negotiations with the manufacturer had come to an end after the parties failed to agree an offset deal equal to the value of the contract for 50 H225M Caracals.

The H225M had been selected by the Polish defence ministry in April 2015, but elections later that year brought to power the Law and Justice Party, which was opposed to the deal, favouring instead the local subsidiaries of Leonardo and Sikorsky – PZL Swidnik and PZL Mielec, respectively.

Airbus Helicopters has so far remained silent on the breakdown of talks, but in an open letter to the Polish prime minister, Guillaume Faury, Airbus Helicopters chief executive, says he must “refute a number of misleading allegations”.

He writes: “It is our belief that Polish citizens and the Polish armed forces deserve full transparency on the tender process in which Airbus Helicopters and Airbus Group have been fully committed over the last four years.”

Faury says that the talks were broken off “unilaterally” by the development ministry on 4 October, despite repeated concessions from the airframer, some of which were granted only the previous day.

The value of its offset package matched the cost of the helicopters including sales tax of 23% - raising the total from Zl10.8 billion ($2.8 billion) to Zl13.4 billion, he says.

“Although compensation of a value added tax through offset is not standard practice, Airbus Helicopters agreed to compensate the gross value.”

He also points out that its offer was the only one which would have created a Polish owned helicopter manufacturer: the local assembly line to be set up for the Caracal would have been run by WZL 1 – a company 90% owned by the Polish government.

Bartosz Glowacki

“There is no Polish state-owned helicopter manufacturer in Poland,” says Faury. “All established facilities are fully owned by their foreign parent companies and are the result of a different industrial approach.”

Airbus Helicopters, he says, is the only one of the three bidders which “made the effort to fully comply with the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Development requirements in its offer” and describes its rivals of issuing “misleading and aggressive communication” since the Caracal was selected.

Faury says that the creation of the assembly line for the H225M, which would produce at least 50 helicopters “both for the domestic and the export markets”, plus providing overhaul capabilities, would “have transformed WZL 1”, turning it from a business looking after “old-generation Russian helicopters” to a “world-class helicopter industrial centre”.

In addition to the Caracal, the facility would have had “growth potential to deliver other helicopter types in the future”.

“It is therefore misleading to compare this project to a mere ‘painting shop’,” Faury says.

As well as a number of other technology transfers, Airbus Helicopters also proposed the setting up of a plant manufacturing rotor and transmission “complex parts” for the airframer's current and future helicopters.

This “outstanding project” was rejected from the offset proposal by the ministry of economic development, despite it representing an initial investment of Zl370 million, and which would generate a turnover of ZL1.7 billion over 10 years.

Faury also says that the development ministry in August 2016 introduced new requirements “some of which were impossible to include” as they were not “compliant with EU regulations” governing the tender.

Source: FlightGlobal.com