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A Northern Ireland aerospace firm is opening a £7.5m facility in Banbridge to crash test passenger aircraft seats.

Thompson Aero Seating makes business class seats for airlines like Delta and Singapore Airlines.

The new facility allows engineers to reproduce conditions of a plane crash in a controlled environment and assess how the seats perform.

Until now this work had to be carried out for Thompson at facilities in the US or EU.

This added time and cost to the development and certification of products.

Aerospace is a highly regulated industry and parts can only be certified for airworthiness after approved testing.

The facility is part of a purpose built engineering centre where the company will develop, test and verify products.

Keith Anderson, Thompson chief executive, said: "The significance of this new state-of-the-art facility cannot be over emphasised in terms of the opportunities it provides.

"Our order book is very strong and the growth trajectory we have over the coming years will be underpinned and supported by our new in-house capability."

Most of the money for the new facility is from Thompson's Chinese owner, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, though Invest NI has also provided some funding.

Jeremy Fitch, Executive Director at Invest NI, said: "This investment in engineering and business capability represents an important and ambitious milestone in Thompson's Northern Ireland story."