* Deliveries down 8 pct next year, stable this year - CEO
* New plan targets savings of 200 million euros by end-2011
* Dollar crimps competitiveness of European players - CEO
* Sharp drop in civil helicopter orders
(Recasts after CEO interview)
By Tim Hepher and Matthias Blamont
PARIS, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The world's biggest civil helicopter maker, Eurocopter, said on Thursday a slump in corporate and VIP spending would force it to cut costs and voiced fears about the cost to European firms of a weak dollar.
In the first indication of the global downturn's impact on production plans for next year, Chief Executive Lutz Bertling also told Reuters he expected the helicopter unit of European group EADS to deliver 8 percent fewer aircraft in 2010.
"The order intake is down 70 percent (in 2009) so the market is not recovering up to now," Bertling said in an interview, adding Eurocopter had received 75 cancellations this year.
Spending by corporations and VIPs has fallen due to the financial crisis and pressure on boardrooms to cut perks, mirroring a slump in business jet orders. But operators of oil and gas fields are still buying as energy prices rebound.
"Next year we will decrease production rates for small helicopters while we will increase production rates for the heavy ones," Bertling said.
"The number of helicopters we deliver next year will be somewhere around 8 percent below this year, and this year will be somewhere around 2008 (levels)," he added. Eurocopter delivered 588 helicopters last year.
Bertling also toned down forecasts given at the start of the year for 450 sales of new helicopters in 2009 compared with 715 in 2008. Eurocopter now targets something closer to half the record 802 orders seen at the peak of the market in 2007.
"It is very difficult to say in these times, but we should at least be above 400," he told Reuters.
Eurocopter said earlier on Thursday it planned 200 million euros ($299.4 million) of recurring annual cost cuts from the end of 2011 in an efficiency project to be known as SHAPE.
The company, a sister division to planemaker Airbus, said it would free up cash by cutting inventories and retrain or redeploy employees to make its factories more efficient. But its 16,000 staff would be spared compulsory redundancies.
"2010 and 2011 will be the most diffficult years for us and we want to stabilise margins and continue to invest," Bertling said. EADS shares ended flat against a weaker European market.
DOLLAR IMPACT
Eurocopter competes with Italy's AgustaWestland, owned by Finmeccanica, Bell Helicopters, a unit of U.S.-based Textron, and United Technologies Corp's Sikorsky in a global market estimated to be worth over $6 billion a year.
It also builds military helicopters such as the Tiger and the delayed NH90. But analysts say the shrinking portion of high-margin civil sales has put pressure on operating profits, which fell 5 percent in the first half.
Speaking as the euro touched the $1.50 level for a second day after hitting 14-month highs, Bertling said the weak dollar was hurting European efforts to compete with U.S. companies.
Unlike Airbus, which sells jetliners exclusively in dollars, Eurocopter is cushioned by having some contracts in euros.
"The direct impact on EBIT (operating income) is not so serious, because we have increased our natural hedging and we are doing a lot of sales in euros," Bertling said.
"But of course it is affecting our competitiveness. Compared to the American suppliers, the European ones have a disadvantage in competitiviness due to the U.S. dollar rate". Formed from a Franco-German merger in 1992 and folded into EADS at the turn of the decade, Eurocopter made up 10.3 percent of both revenues and operating income at Europe's largest aerospace company in 2008.
It is EADS's third largest business behind Airbus and Defence and Security, and roughly the same size as its Astrium space business. EADS and Airbus have recently stepped up calls for action to help European exporters cope with the weak dollar.
(Editing by Jason Neely and David Cowell)