ROCKFORD Five years ago, it was an idea. Five years from now, B/E Aerospace Ecosystems expects to generate $50 million a year selling toilets for business and commercial jets from its plant near Chicago Rockford International Airport.

B/E Aerospace is a home-grown business expanding into a growing aerospace field, an industry to which the region has pinned its wings as it seeks to improve a manufacturing economy that has suffered through more pain than gain cycles over the past several decades.

While there are only 74 employees today, there will be many more tomorrow, next year and the year after, said CEO Amin Khoury, who pegged the revenue goal Monday as the company invited the public to see the new research and assembly facility at 5795 Logistics Parkway.

In midsummer, the company moved into the 38,000-square-foot building, where it will ramp up production next year of its vacuum waste systems to meet orders from nine business-jet makers. Boeing is among the companies, buying B/Es system for its 737 program.

Boeing projects that 34,000 commercial jets will be built by 2031, but demand for business jets is also expected to take off. In June, Bombardier Aerospace said 24,000 business jets worth $648 billion will be built by 2031.

All of them will need toilet systems.

Khoury said B/Es toilets are lighter, more reliable and easier to maintain than those of the companys competitors, making them less expensive for aircraft owners.

Rockford is one of 30 worldwide B/E locations and, perhaps, its most unusual. B/E first tried the conventional avenue into the aircraft bathroom business, but its 2004 bid for Envirovac, a Machesney Park maker of vacuum toilet systems, was unsuccessful.

Three years later, it decided to experiment with a startup, hiring former Envirovac President Bob Shafer to run it. The company began developing prototypes and innovating around them. This is really an engineering company, said Shafer, noting that 41 of the 74 employees are engineers.

B/Es growth started in 2007 after it became a tenant at EIGERlab, an incubator started with congressional earmarks from Rep. Don Manzullo.

Original post:

B/E Aerospace flush with success over toilets for business jets