Bombardier to get £225m loans from Canadian government

Image source, Reuters

Image caption, Bombardier has spent £520m on a new factory in Belfast to build wings for the CSeries

Canada's federal government has announced a loan package of 372.5m Canadian dollars (£225m) for two of Bombardier's jet projects.

The aerospace company is based in Canada but is Northern Ireland's largest manufacturing employer with around 5,000 workers.

The money will be used for Bombardier's CSeries project and a line of business jets.

Wings for the CSeries are made in Bombardier's facility in east Belfast.

鶹Լ News NI Economics & Business Editor John Campbell said the money should go some way in helping to preserve jobs in Belfast.

Bombardier has needed help over the past year to ease financial problems which have resulted in thousands of job losses across it global operations.

The aerospace company last year axed 630 jobs at its Belfast plant as part of cutting 7,000 jobs across its global workforce.

Bombardier originally sought 1bn Canadian dollars in the deal and received that amount from the Quebec province government in a bailout deal in October 2015.