Aeronautics and security: ASI wins an exceptional contract
Prunay, January 14, 2022
ASI, through its two divisions ASI-Innovation and ASI-Aviation, has just won an exceptional contract from the French defense procurement agency (Direction Générale de l'Armement - DGA).
The contract covers the acquisition and modification of Beechcraft 360-ER aircraft into Avions Banc d'Essais Légers (ABE-L), together with maintenance in operational conditions and associated services.
The thirteen-year contract takes effect on January 7, 2022, and covers ASI's acquisition of Beechcraft 360 ER aircraft, for which the Marne-based company will provide all the engineering services required to modify them into Aircraft Test Beds (ABE-L), in line with DGA requirements. ASI-Group will be responsible for manufacturing the equipment to be integrated, installation, qualification, certification, delivery and crew training. The contract also covers the maintenance of the aircraft in operational conditions for a period of ten years. ABE-L (Avions Banc d'Essais Légers) are designed to provide DGA EV (Essais en Vol) with the capabilities it needs to ensure the development and fine-tuning of weapons systems over the coming decades, and the training of test crews at EPNER (École du personnel navigant d'essais et de réceptions).
Both ASI-Group entities are based in Prunay and Vatry, in the Marne region, and employ around sixty people. However, the award of this contract should generate around ten additional jobs, helping to develop the activity of the recently inaugurated integration and maintenance center at Paris-Vatry international airport, and to maintain the engineering activity at Prunay, just outside Reims.
A change of altitude!
This contract confirms ASI's position as a national leader in the aeronautical sector. This contract adds to the references of a group which had already won over the French customs and gendarmerie. At the same time, ASI continues to expand its export business.
For ASI, which recently acquired the assets of BCA (Business and Commuter Aircraft) in Clermont, this contract worth several tens of millions of euros marks a new turning point in a development policy destined to go from strength to strength. Other promising prospects, notably in the export market, should help the group, which achieved sales of €10.5 million before the Covid 19 pandemic, to change altitude completely, while retaining the attitude that has made it so successful: listening to its customers and anticipating their expectations.
Contact: Jean-Pierre KOHN, président-jp.kohn@asi-innovation.fr - 06 48 35 11 16
The ASI Group, headquartered in Reims near Paris, is a French group comprising two separate companies:
ASI Innovation, founded in 2010, is a design office specializing in the design, manufacture and certification of mission systems, cabin fittings and avionics installations.
Today, ASI Innovation is one of the few French groups to have obtained, from the highest European aeronautical authorities (EASA), the invaluable “DOA PART 21 J (Design Organisation Approval)” which enables it, with a constant concern for quality and seriousness, to certify to European as well as American authorities, all the tasks involved in the design, development and integration of complex systems on fixed- or rotary-wing aircraft.
In March 2014, ASI Innovation created ASI Aviation, which it owns 100%, with a view to taking over the assets of Reims Aviation Industries.
ASI Aviation specializes in the development, production and marketing of aircraft, including the famous F406 (nearly 80 aircraft worldwide, including several operated as mission, surveillance and maritime patrol aircraft), cabin fitting, mission systems integration and installation, spare parts production and aircraft maintenance. ASI Aviation thus has the industrial capacity to integrate mission systems designed by ASI Innovation into aircraft.