Westland / Yeovil

The Yeovil helicopter plant, located in Somerset, England, is the UK’s primary helicopter manufacturing facility and the country’s last full-spectrum rotary-wing production site. Its origins date back to 1915, when aviation pioneer Petter, Son & Co. began aircraft work in Yeovil, followed shortly by Westland Aircraft, formally established in 1935. During the Second World War, Westland became Britain’s principal helicopter developer, producing and later licensing key designs. From the late 1940s onward, Yeovil emerged as the national centre for helicopter manufacture, assembling and developing aircraft such as the Whirlwind, Wessex, Sea King, and Lynx, many of them built under licence from U.S. manufacturers or through international partnerships.

Ownership of the Yeovil plant evolved through a series of consolidations within the British and European aerospace industry. Westland Helicopters became GKN Westland in the 1990s, before being acquired by Finmeccanica (then AgustaWestland and now Leonardo) in 2000, giving the site its current ownership. Under Leonardo, Yeovil has remained a design, manufacturing, and integration hub, responsible for final assembly lines, flight testing, support, and export production of helicopters such as the AW101 Merlin, AW159 Wildcat, and AW149. The plant plays a strategic role in UK defence and industrial policy, sustaining thousands of skilled jobs and sovereign manufacturing capabilities, and its long-term future is closely linked to major procurement programmes such as the New Medium Helicopter (NMH).

Westland timeline.