{"id":446716,"date":"2026-02-26T13:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/446716\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:26:08","slug":"rolls-royce-boss-pushes-for-uk-taxpayer-support-for-new-jet-engine-rolls-royce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/446716\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolls-Royce boss pushes for UK taxpayer support for new jet engine | Rolls-Royce"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of Rolls-Royce<\/a> has pressed ministers for taxpayer support for a new jet engine, on a day the company also announced record profits and promised to give up to \u00a39bn back to shareholders.<\/p>\n

The \u00a33bn engine project, designed to power smaller commercial planes, would allow Rolls-Royce to re-enter the lucrative short-haul flights market.<\/p>\n

Tufan Erginbilgi\u00e7 said on Thursday: \u201cNot supporting it would be a sort of strange thing to do,\u201d given Labour had named advanced manufacturing as a priority in its industrial strategy, released last summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rolls-Royce has already spent more than \u00a31bn on the project, while it has reportedly asked the UK government to initially provide between \u00a3100m and \u00a3200m to develop and test the UltraFan 30 engine.<\/p>\n

Erginbilgi\u00e7 said: \u201cThere are all sorts of numbers out there. Whatever they support, we will appreciate that, but it is going to be a fraction of what we are spending \u2026 in this programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed on whether the support was necessary amid vast profit and shareholder payouts, he claimed international rivals received \u201ctwo or three times\u201d the state support Rolls-Royce was asking for. \u201cWe are in a competitive world; therefore, you need to think about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The engine would mark Rolls-Royce\u2019s return to the market for smaller jets that it abandoned in 2013. Narrow-body planes \u2013 the kind used on everyday short-haul routes \u2013 make up the vast majority of commercial aircraft flying today.<\/p>\n

Rolls-Royce\u2019s profits soared by 40% last year as the engineering company\u2019s turnaround gathered pace, helped by booming demand for power from datacentres.<\/p>\n

The company reported underlying profits of \u00a33.5bn for 2025, up from \u00a32.5bn the year before, as it also promised to give up to \u00a39bn to shareholders over the next three years through share buybacks, its biggest return of cash to investors in a decade.<\/p>\n

Erginbilgi\u00e7, a former BP executive, has transformed the engine maker\u2019s fortunes<\/a> since taking over in January 2023, when he told staff the company was standing on a \u201cburning platform\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since then profit has soared as he cut costs, renegotiated lossmaking contracts and pushed through better commercial terms with airline customers.<\/p>\n

The strong results posted on Thursday were driven in part by an increase in demand for power from datacentres, as technology companies race to build infrastructure to support artificial intelligence. Profits at Rolls-Royce\u2019s power systems division, which makes generators for the sites, jumped 60% to \u00a3852m last year.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the company\u2019s profits still come from its civil aerospace business, however, where there was strong demand for its commercial jet engines. It also makes money every time one of its engines is in the air.<\/p>\n

Rolls-Royce serviced more engines last year, it said, and benefited from better contract terms, with a 41% jump in profits from the division to \u00a32.1bn.<\/p>\n

It also had to navigate the turbulence caused by Donald Trump\u2019s tariff war in 2025, although the company was eventually exempted for its engines<\/a>, which power Boeing\u2019s 787 passenger jet, as part of a US-UK trade deal struck in May.<\/p>\n

Erginbilgi\u00e7 said Rolls-Royce\u2019s turnaround \u201ccontinues with pace and intensity. We are consistently achieving outcomes that were not possible before our transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company raised its forecast significantly, now expecting an operating profit of between \u00a34.9bn and \u00a35.2bn by 2028 \u2013 about a third more than it had previously targeted.<\/p>\n

Rolls-Royce said it would return \u00a32.5bn to shareholders this year alone, as part of the longer-term buyback plan. The company only completed its first buyback in a decade last year, returning \u00a31bn to investors.<\/p>\n

Last June, Rolls-Royce was chosen to build the UK\u2019s first small nuclear reactors<\/a> at Wylfa in north Wales, backed by \u00a32.5bn of government funding. The company said it was confident the business would be making money within five years.<\/p>\n

Rolls-Royce shares rose almost 7% on Thursday morning, helping to push the FTSE 100 to a record high of 10,825 points, up 18 points, or 0.15%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief executive of Rolls-Royce has pressed ministers for taxpayer support for a new jet engine, on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-446716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}