Kale Group and Pratt & Whitney celebrated the opening of a new factory in the Izmir Aegean Free Zone, which will specialise in manufacturing hardware for the F135 engine powering the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft.

Kale Pratt & Whitney is a joint venture between Turkey-based Kale Group, and US-based Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corporation.

The joint venture established in 2010 with Pratt & Whitney marks another significant milestone for Kale Group’s involvement in the programme. Kale Group, which owns 51 per cent stake in the new joint venture, and Pratt & Whitney, which owns 49 per cent, invested $75 million into the new 13,600-square-metre facility.

The facility will use state-of-the-art technologies critical to the production of the F135 engine. Kale Pratt & Whitney anticipates the facility will employ several hundred employees as production for the F-35 programme expands.