Having already established a subsidiary -Antonov Aircraft Canada- in March, the company is now seeking political and financial support from the Quebec government to settle in the province.

Desmond Burke, director of Gold Leaf Aviation, representing Antonov’s interests in Canada, says that they want to find aircraft manufacturers. The company wants to manifacture AN-74 which was designed in the late 1970s. The AN-74 is a twin-engine cargo plane that can fly a distance of 4,600 kilometres at 560 km / h.

Mr Burke describes the device as the aerial equivalent of a “pickup truck” or “workhorse”. Antonov now wants to modernize it.

“The design and final assembly” of the device would be done in Quebec. It would be a “utility plane” designed from “the best of what there is in the Quebec aeronautical industry”. The AN-74 could “potentially use engines manufactured by Pratt & Whitney or technologies from [Montreal] CMC Electronics”.

The air forces of Russia, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Iran have the aircraft in their respective fleets. In January, the Ukrainian government said it wanted to resume the AN-74 and add it to its fleet.

The Antonov Aircraft Canada subsidiary was established in March 2021. Its task is to mediate cooperation between the Government of Ukraine and the Quebec Ministry of Economic and Innovation and use the SPRINT program to support Quebec government investment projects.