Cirrus Expands Its Footprint in Duluth

On Friday, the company announced that it has expanded its Paint and Finish Facility at the Duluth International Airport (KDLH) by 16,000 square feet—bringing it to 86,000 square feet—increasing its paint-spraying capacity by roughly 35 percent. Cirrus has recently added a long list of premium paint options (such as the Himalayan Salt option on the SR22T) to both its SR and SF50 color schemes. The new space will help the company deliver on those options.

“We are proud to expand the Cirrus Paint and Finish Facility at our Duluth headquarters,” said Zean Nielsen, CEO of Cirrus Aircraft. “These investments allow us to both meet the increasing demand for our leading-edge aircraft and create additional jobs in our local communities.”  

Cirrus has been a major employer in the Duluth area since it began development of the SR series in the mid-1990s. It now employs 130 people in the Paint and Finish Facility alone, according to the company, and it will hire 50 more in the coming months. More than 1,200 people total work at Cirrus facilities in Duluth, and it has more than 2,100 employees across the company.

Like most aerospace companies, however, finding the right folks has been a challenge. 

In an interview with FLYING in May, Nielsen highlighted the need to get the right people on board in a short period of time. “We’re scaling very rapidly right now at Cirrus, you can see some of that in the GAMA [2021 aircraft delivery] numbers, but it’s actually far more than that—because that’s just what we can deliver. The incoming orders are significantly higher.”

“Ramping manufacturing, ramping production, it will just take longer…We’re very capacity-constrained compared to demand-constrained.” Backlog extends into 2024 “and beyond,” according to Nielsen. “Right now we are planning to hire 403 people this year, which is a 20 to 25 percent headcount growth year over year.” 

“Duluth is a relatively small market,” in which to hire, so many of those Nielsen intends to bring on board will be in Knoxville or Dallas, or other Cirrus locations.