Airbus's proposed sale of three factories in Germany has collapsed after a consortium led by Cerberus, the private equity group, failed to raise sufficient money.

The European aerospace company said that no industrial or financial agreement could be reached with Cerberus and its partner, OHB Technology, and so the deal would be scrapped.

However, this opens the way for GKN, the British engineering group, to complete the purchase of Airbus's wing factory at Filton next month.

Airbus had hoped to announce the sale of six factories across Europe at the same time, but will now go ahead with the sale of half the proposed sites and restart negotiations in Germany with a new buyer.

GKN's purchase of Filton, which was the home of Concorde, has been ready for completion for months and could be announced within a couple of weeks.

Airbus is selling the sites as part of a restructuring programme called Power 8, which aims to reduce costs and staff numbers.

The company named OHB and Cerberus as preferred bidders for its sites at Nordenham, Varel and Augsburg last year.

The two groups failed to reach an agreement on price and the level of investment that OHB would make in the factories to win future work from Airbus.

These negotiations were made more difficult by the strength of the euro against the US dollar, Airbus said.

Tom Enders, the chief executive of Airbus, said: “Our site divestment and partnership objectives are part of a long-term business strategy to which we are fully committed.”

GKN is hoping that acquisition of Filton will give it greater exposure to the booming aerospace sector. Filton employs about 4,500 people and is home to Airbus's wing design and wing component centres.

GKN beat Spirit Aerosystems, the Kansas City firm, to be named as preferred bidder for Filton. However, Spirit may now rebid for the three German factories.

Loius Gallois, the chief executive of EADS, Airbus's parent company, said: “We have to study other schemes. I don't want to mention any possible solution.”

The German IG Metall union and Airbus's German works council welcomed the ending of the negotiations. They said that the sale would have been a risk for both Airbus and its employees.

Airbus is hoping to stem steep losses by restructuring its operations. These losses have been made worse by the strength of the euro, which wiped nearly €1 billion (£780 million) from its profitability last year.

The other sites that Airbus is divesting are at Meault/Saint-Nazaire in France and Laupheim in Germany. These were unaffected by the collapse of talks with MT Aerospace.

— The Ministry of Defence agreed the largest Private Finance Initiative yesterday with the acquisition of new air-refuelling tankers in a deal worth £13 billion. The 14 new tankers will be supplied and maintained by a consortium including EADS, which owns Airbus, Rolls-Royce, VT Group, Cobham and Thales UK. The consortium has raised £2.5 billion to begin converting the Airbus A330s into military refuelling planes.

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