New factories and Paris headquarters will deliver sovereign capability, state-owned group argues.
UAE state-owned defence group EDGE will by the next June have opened two new production sites in France as part of a recently announced European investment strategy.
On 11 June, the group revealed that it had set up a new Paris-headquartered entity, EDGE Europe, and was working to establish an engineering and manufacturing hub in the Bordeaux region in southwest France.
But speaking to FlightGlobal at the Eurosatory defence exhibition in Paris, Khaled Al Zaabi, president of EDGE’s platforms and systems cluster, disclosed that two production sites are planned.
One, to be located in the Bordeaux area, will produce propulsion systems for EDGE’s Powertech unit, including piston engines, and micro- and turbojets to power drones and munitions.
A second site at an as-yet undisclosed location will produce uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the French armed forces but also will address the export market. It will be sized initially to build up to 10,000 units per year of various sizes.
“That facility will have the flexibility to allow us to do different-sized drones from smaller guided munitions to long-range deep strike assets and everything in between,” says Al Zaabi.
“The engineering capability we have also allows us to develop purpose-built drones that are purely for French use.”
Al Zaabi expects that “by this time next year we should have both factories up and running”.
Although EDGE already has a presence in Europe through its ownership of companies like Swiss rotary-wing UAV developer Anavia and Poland’s Flaris, the Abu Dhabi firm has not previously established a sovereign business in the region.
“This is not us opening a branch office in France, it is created to be an incumbent neo-prime for France,” he says.
“We are only coming here after having spent many years in Europe, investing in Europe, and because of that we feel that now is the time for us to jump in with both feet.”
Al Zaabi argues there is the need for both additional industrial capacity to meet soaring demand for unmanned systems, and for “more neo-primes, more companies”.
Output from the propulsion plant will initially serve the broader EDGE group as it waits for demand to emerge from France itself.
But Al Zaabi says the company was keen to have the facility up and running as soon as possible.
“We did not want to wait until we had a contract or an order for someone to tell us to open a factory in France because by then it’s too late.”
The time required to open such a facility from a standing start would put EDGE at a disadvantage “and by then whoever is already here is beating us to the punch”, he says.
“The idea is to use our existing backlog in the UAE as a springboard to allow the business case for us to establish a presence in France and while we are doing that familiarise ourselves with the ecosystem and supply chain in Europe.”
Overall, he argues, the move into Europe supports EDGE’s mission “to ensure the sovereignty of the UAE’s defence capability and be a major economic contributor to the UAE”.
“But to do that, we need to expand beyond the borders of the UAE, and wherever we expand to, we want to be viewed as a global organisation serving the interests of strategic allies and partners.”
Separately, EDGE and French aerospace and defence firm Safran at Eurosatory signed a strategic co-operation agreement, establishing a framework “for a deeper cooperation and broadening the scope of
joint work across the wider portfolios of both groups”.
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