Harbin Hafei Airbus Composite Manufacturing Center, a joint venture between Airbus SAS and its Chinese partners, delivered its first ship set of elevators for the Airbus 350 XWB on Monday.

The elevators will be installed into the A350 XWB horizontal tail plane in Spain as part of the European aircraft manufacturer’s newest wide-body aircraft program.

"The delivery of the first A350 XWB elevator demonstrates one more step forward by HMC toward its set target," said Geng Ruguang, executive vice-president of AVIC, the parent company of HMC’s majority shareholding — AVIC Harbin Aircraft Industry Group Co Ltd.

According to an agreement signed in 2007 between Airbus and the Chinese government, Airbus agreed to allocate 5 percent of the A350 XWB airframe to be manufactured in China and HMC is constructing a significant part of that 5 percent.

The A350 took its first flight in June and is due to be delivered in 2014.