French multinational Thales knocks on the door of the Ministry of Defence and Spanish industry
The Vice President of International Development of the Thales Group, Pascale Sourisse, has disembarked in Madrid to present the new opportunities for cooperation that the French technology multinational envisages to the senior officials of the Secretary of State for Defence and the heads of the main defence companies.
Accompanied by her Director for Europe, Marc Darmon, and the President of Thales Spain since April 2013, Jesús Sánchez Bargos, Pascale Sourisse held working meetings with the team of the Director General of Armaments and Material, Admiral Aniceto Rosique, and with senior executives of the Spanish aerospace and defence companies with which Thales has strategic agreements.
With more than 30 years of experience in the space and defence sector, Sourisse stresses that the competencies of the European defence industry are ‘very large and very solid’, that the European Commission's cooperative approach is ‘crucial’ and that Brussels must ‘facilitate and encourage synergies between companies from different countries’.
But she also believes that ‘each nation has its own sovereignty and has created its own technological and industrial capabilities on its own territory, so the level of European cooperation should not replace the national strengths that each state already possesses, but rather reinforce them’.
At the Ministry of Defence, Sourisse has raised the possibility of participating in the French and Italian cooperation programme to develop the new-generation SAMP/T NG medium-range ground-based anti-aircraft system. Based on the Aster family of missiles, they have been equipped with an interception range of over 150 kilometres and the capability to integrate short-range missile systems.
A broad presence in Spain
The business meetings with Escribano M&E, Grupo Oesia, Indra, Navantia and Telefónica of Sourisse and her companions focused on reviewing the evolution and current status of the various Spanish and export programmes in which Thales participates with its technology through its Spanish subsidiary.
At the end of February, Pascale Sourisse signed an agreement with Indra's CEO, José Vicente de los Mozos, to reinforce the technological sovereignty and industrial base of European defence. Both companies play a leading role in the FCAS, the future European fighter, and want to take advantage of their synergies and complementary capabilities to cooperate in research, development and innovation initiatives and in the search for new business opportunities in Spain and abroad, especially in radar systems, communications, simulation and cybersecurity.
For the new F-110 frigates that Navantia is building at its Ferrol shipyard, Thales has a contract since December 2019 worth more than 165 million euros to provide each warship with two sonars -CAPTAS 4 Compact and BlueMaster-, the BlueScan digital acoustic system and TUUM-6 underwater communications. The contract includes a technology transfer programme for Spanish industry to provide a substantial part of the equipment included in the aforementioned systems.
With the Oesia Group led by Lluís Furnells, Sourisse signed a cooperation agreement last June to undertake new dual-use initiatives aimed at digital transformation and cybersecurity, as well as to develop and market avionics, space, quantum technologies, secure communications, mission systems, simulation, air defence missile systems, optronics and electronic warfare equipment.
From the point of view of Thales' senior vice-president for Europe, Marc Darmon, the presence of his company in Spain is 'quite important', as it has a human capital of around 1,200 people distributed among a dozen sites and factories in Cartagena, Alicante, Barcelona, Pamplona, León and several locations in the Basque Country. Also in Madrid city and province -Leganés and Tres Cantos-, where a large part of its activity in communications, satellite systems and cybersecurity is concentrated.
A year of strong growth in contracts, production and revenues
For example, at its Leganés headquarters, Thales plans to ‘extend the useful life of a large part of the 12,000 PR4G tactical portable radios used by the Army and the Marines by providing additional capabilities,’ according to Jesús Sánchez Bargos, head of the company in Spain. In a first contract, ‘it is planned to extend the life of some 4,000 V3 version radios and to upgrade another package of radios by 2025 or 2026’.
With a view to complementing and taking over from the PR4G, Marc Darmon, the technology manager for Europe, hopes to find ‘the right approach’ to be able to contribute Thales technology to a future national programme of software-defined tactical radios, which would be interoperable with those of other Atlantic Alliance countries.
Pascal Sourisse's presence in Spain coincides with the publication of Thales' financial report for the first three quarters of 2024, in which its order book increased by 23% to 15.6 billion euros and turnover grew by 6.2% to 14.1 billion euros. These figures give the multinational confidence that 2024 will end with a turnover of between 19.9 and 20.1 billion euros.
Benefiting from the increased defence budgets of the vast majority of nations around the world in the wake of the war in Ukraine and its possible future repercussions, Thales is one of the four major industrial groups in France's aerospace and defence sector. Along with the French arm of the Airbus consortium, the military and business jet manufacturer Dassault Aviation and the producer of engines for aircraft, helicopters, space rockets and ballistic missiles, Safran.
The majority of Thales shares are held by the French state - 26.6%, but with 36.37 voting rights - followed by the shareholding held by the private company Dassault - 26.59%, but with 29.9 voting rights.
The multinational has been led since December 2014 by a senior French government official. His name is Patrice Caine, 54, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Supérieure des Mines de Paris who, before joining the company in 2002, was technical advisor to the Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry Laurent Fabius (2000-2002) during the period of cohabitation between Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
