Aubert & Duval acquisition
In this week’s news, Airbus, Safran and Tikehau Ace Capital have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with mining and metallurgical group Eramet to acquire its subsidiary Aubert & Duval. The three partners intend to acquire 100% of Aubert & Duval through a new joint holding company that would be specifically set up for this transaction and in which they would have equal ownership rights. And reason?
Aubert & Duval is a strategic supplier of critical materials and parts to particularly demanding industries, including aerospace, defense, nuclear and healthcare. And since they were not doing well, the threat of this supplier being put out of business led to this move. The idea that France could lose a strategic supplier of materials, e.g. for the engines of these Rafale fighters, would probably be quite stressful.
In addition, Airbus supplies hundreds of aircraft for the Chinese market, as well as Safran’s Leap 1-C engines to the Chinese aircraft manufacturer Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China). To lose this business just because Aubert & Duval was no longer able to attract high energy prices would probably be fatal for the French, but not only for them.
So I vaguely remember Poldi Kladno, or Považské Strojárne, Letecké Motory, where DV-2 engines for Albatros L-39 were produced. And as I wrote in my blog https://www.jstconsultancy.cz/aerospace-2023/, this engine is exactly what we need to have our Aviation Valley here, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Kladno or Považská Bystrica.
The above acquisition only proves that if there is a will, anything is possible… maybe take an example from Macron and fly after a master blacksmith instead of a little blacksmith. But that’s another chapter…
April 30, 2023
Jiří Stanislav
