Airbus, Areva Ink $26.7B in Chinese Orders

Pan-European aerospace giant Airbus SAS and French state-controlled nuclear-engineering company Areva SA signed $26.7 billion in orders Monday in China.

The deals, signed while French President Nicolas Sarkozy was on the second day of his first state visit to the Asian trading giant, include $14.8 billion for Airbus to deliver 160 passenger jets to Chinese airlines and $11.9 billion for Areva to supply two reactors, technology and uranium, the companies said.

The Airbus order includes 110 short- to medium-range A320 jets and 50 larger, wide-body, medium- to long-range A330s, Airbus said.

The European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. NV subsidiary, based in Toulouse, France, has won orders this year to deliver a record 1,340 aircraft, topping its previous high of 1,111 in 2005, The New York Times reported.

Areva, the world’s largest nuclear company by revenue, said its deal with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co. involved building two of its third-generation 1,600-megawatt EPR reactors in coastal Taishan, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, about 90 miles west of Hong Kong.

The Paris company said the Chinese company also agreed to buy 35 percent of the production of Areva’s uranium mining subsidiary, UraMin, which will source the nuclear fuel from its three mines in Africa.