LOVES PARK — Workers at Woodward Inc.'s Loves Park operations will spend the next five years inspecting and refurbishing hydro-mechanical units in nearly 4,500 U.S. Army helicopters as part of a $54 million contract.
The award was announced earlier this month.
Billy Kent, marketing manager for Woodward's turbine systems, said the hydro-mechanical units are rotating fuel pumps and controls attached to the engine gearbox. They control the fuel flow to the main engine.
U.S. Army helicopters operate in harsh environments and the contract is a standard maintenance deal meant to keep Army equipment ready for combat at a moment's notice.
Workers at Woodward's 5001 N. Second St. location — where the company was headquartered for decades — have been supporting the Army's helicopter hydro-mechanical unit program for 25 years. Woodward was the only company to bid on the work.
The HMUs are part of the T700 engine that powers the main Army helicoptors, the Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk and the Boeing AH-64 Apache.
Kent said the contract "is in line with other awards of this type. Engine maintenance is a regular and normal cost of owning any type of certified flying vehicle."
Still, it's a significant contract. According to the website governmentcontractswon.com, which tracks awards to the thousands of companies supplying the U.S. military, Woodward's Loves Park operations have won $350.2 million in defense contracts this decade.
The best year was 2016, when the Loves Park operations won $74.1 million in contracts and the worst was 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession, when it won $14.1 million.
Woodward, which was founded in Rockford in 1870 and now is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, remains one of the area's largest employers. The company said it has 2,000 workers at its Rock Cut campus off of Perryville Road and the North Second Street location. Only Rockwell Collins, UPS, OSF Healthcare, SwedishAmerican Health System, Mercyhealth, Rockford Public Schools and Fiat Chrysler employ more people in the area.
Woodward, which is publicly traded under the symbol WWD, reported its 2019 results in November. The company had $2.9 billion in net sales for 2019, up 25 percent from 2018, with $260 million in net earnings.
Most of Woodward's work in Loves Park is in its aerospace segment, and aerospace accounted for $1.88 billion of the sales, up 21 percent from 2018.
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