A section of an A320 arrives at the new plant ready for final assembly

Airbus will step up its battle with American rival Boeing this week when the European plane-maker officially opens its airliner plant in the US.

The Toulouse-based company’s top management are due to attend a ceremony on Monday at the new $600m facility in Mobile, Alabama, which will produce the company’s best-selling A320 family of medium-sized twin-engine jets.

Airbus's newest jet, the A350, visits the company's new plant in Alabama

The 116-acre project at Brookley Aeroplex has been more than four years in the making, with the first jet produced there scheduled for delivery in 2016.

Opening a plant in its rival’s home nation shows Airbus’s determination to win the dogfight for market share in the aerospace industry, which is expected to see almost 30,000 new airliners needed over the next 20 years in a market valued at $5 trillion.

It also makes economic sense for the company, with Alabama offering a cheap source of labour and the state providing more than $150m of incentives to attract Airbus. America’s employment laws are also less stringent than those in the plane-maker’s home countries, making it easier to react to any downturn in the economic cycle.

Airbus A320's being assembled at one of the company's exisiting production lines

Some industry analysts have speculated that the decision to open a major plant in America could pave the way to tie-ups with Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer, which produce aircraft slightly smaller than the A320, though when it comes developing the replacement for the A320, they could join forces.

However, speaking as the Alabama operation was announced Airbus said the location was chosen “simply” because of its “proximity to a very, very large market and international footprint for the company”.

Opening up in Alabama also helps insulate Airbus from currency swings – while the weaker euro might now be boosting its competitiveness, this could easily be reversed and having a global spread helps mitigate this.

Sandy Morris, an analyst at Jefferies, said: “Whatever Airbus can do to reduce this risk is going to stand it in good stead on average. One needs to think in terms of a decade with Airbus, not just one or two years.”

Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at Strategic Aero Research, said: “A factory in the US will give more direct competition to Boeing, which only has one plant in Renton building its 737 jets which compete with the A320, but at the same time, with a foothold in the US, Airbus can better access an alternate supply chain to slash costs.”

While buying jets made in America might also boost Airbus’s appeal to US airlines, the company is also increasing its costs with the Alabama site,m he said.

“Airbus has massive costs to surmount in making this site viable,” said Mr Ahmad. “Just the shipping of A320 family wings from Broughton, North Wales, where all Airbus’s wings are made, to Mobile will costs hundreds of millions. The new Alabama site will not be able to create economies of scale to rein in shipment costs. The only way Airbus can mitigate this is through lower costs elsewhere in Europe to offset shipping price escalation for its US factory.”

Airbus currently assembles a total of about 42 A320s each month across its Toulouse base, a secondary facility in Hamburg and a plant in China, which opened in 2008 and was its first outside Europe.

Earlier this year chief operating officer Tom Williams said the company hoped to increase this rate to 46 A320s a month by the second quarter of 2016 to help meet Airbus’s record order book, with customers waiting for almost 5,500 models of the single-aisle aircraft.

The 1,000 staff the Alabama plant is expected to employ once it hits peak production in 2018 are expected to turn out 40 to 50 A320s a month, helping satisfy customer demand. （By Alan Tovey）