UK family firm discloses intention to divest its final division in annual report.
The owner of Marshall Aerospace is in a “comprehensive sales process” to find a buyer for the UK-based military maintenance, repair and overhaul provider, which it hopes to conclude this year.
Cambridge-based Marshall Group disclosed its plans in its annual report and accounts for 2025, filed on 7 August.
The move appears to have been prompted by the signing late last year of a deal to transfer 12 former UK Royal Air Force Lockheed Martin C-130Js to Turkey after a long-running negotiation.
While Marshall does not own the Hercules transports, it will benefit from a re-entry into service and initial sustainment contract from Ankara worth around £200 million ($271 million) over four years, providing the struggling outfit with much needed cash flow.
“With such a strengthened position for the aerospace business, we elected to take the business to market in [the first quarter of 2026] seeking a full disposal,” says Marshall.
“A competitive sales process is ongoing, and whilst there is no guarantee, we are hopeful of a satisfactory transaction in 2026.”
The aerospace arm is effectively the last functioning business within the 117-year-old family firm that until recently had revenues of £1.5 billion and included one of the UK’s largest car dealership portfolios as well as a land systems division and a composites manufacturer.
After divesting the dealerships after the pandemic, Marshall sold its Fleet Solutions, Land Systems, and Advanced Composites businesses last year. Late in 2025, Marshall says it received an “unsolicited offer” from a housing developer for the freehold of most of its estate, which includes Cambridge airport and the Marshall Aerospace facilities.
A sale was concluded in June and the aerospace business must vacate the property by mid-2029.
Marshall Aerospace’s chief executive Bob Baxter has been open about the business’s need to find a new home, telling FlightGlobal earlier this year that it was looking at potential sites, including airfields in the east of England.
Last year, Marshall Aerospace abandoned a planned relocation to a new-build site next to Cranfield University, admitting the move was no longer financially viable.
While Marshall Group reported a loss before tax of £51.5 million in 2025, the aerospace unit itself made a small operational profit of £7.5 million. However, the business was seriously impacted by the loss of its sustainment contract on the RAF C-130Js in 2023, a contract it had expected to run until at least the mid-2030s.
It is unclear who might buy Marshall Aerospace, with London likely to be keen to retain one of the country’s few specialist defence engineering businesses in British hands as it pushes a new defence industrial policy, despite the retirement of the RAF’s C-130J fleet.
C-130 MRO work remains Marshall’s core activity and manufacturer Lockheed Martin may also be keen to preserve that capability for its global customers.
Other MRO firms with a major interest in the C-130J include US firm StandardAero and majority Embraer-owned OGMA of Portugal.
At last month’s Farnborough air show, Lockheed Martin and Leonardo signed an agreement aimed at increasing MRO services for the C-130J across Europe, the Middle East and north Africa.
Marshall Group says that once the aerospace division is sold, its intention is to transition into an “investment business”.
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