The first aircraft arrived yesterday at the new Dean Baldwin Painting LP facility located at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport in Macon, GA. marking the official start of operations. 

The aircraft, a B767-300 freighter aircraft owned by Cargo Aircraft Management, a subsidiary of ATSG (Air Transport Services Group), will be completely stripped and painted to a new colorful livery over a 12-to-14-day period.

The facility has four hangars designed for aircraft painting, a material warehouse, administration building, air filtration systems and a water treatment processing plant.   Three hangars will accommodate aircraft as large as the A321 or C130J size aircraft. The fourth hangar will accommodate a B767 or C17 aircraft.  Having four separated hangars, the facility will process four aircraft simultaneously.   

Barbara Baldwin-McNulty, CEO and CFO of Dean Baldwin Painting, was in Macon to greet the arriving aircraft.  

“We are excited to see Dean Baldwin Painting welcome their first of many airplanes into their brand-new facility at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport,” said Stephen Adams, Executive Director of the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority. “Barbara and her team are a pleasure to work with and we are pleased to officially welcome them ‘home’ to Macon-Bibb County.”   

During a period when many companies were pulling back in response to a shuttered economy brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Barbara Baldwin-McNulty was planning her next expansion— a move that would create a company footprint in the Southeastern U.S. 

The construction groundbreaking took place in March 2020 just as the airlines and much of the economy began shutting down for the pandemic.  By the end of March Dean Baldwin Painting’s sales backlog for 2020 had nearly evaporated and its hangars that were full of customer aircraft suddenly became empty. 

“2020 was a very bad year for us, no question”, said Barbara Baldwin-McNulty.  “I am an optimist, and I knew the economy would eventually turn around and we were going to be ready when it did,” Barbara continued. 

Previous expansions began with existing hangars that required enlarging and converting to an aircraft painting facility.  This time it was different. This location was a greenfield new build from the ground up adjacent to the aircraft taxiway at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport.   

Yesterday’s aircraft is the first of a backlog that is quickly filling.