Naval Group meets industry, academic and research partners during the “R&D Partners‘ Days” in Athens and Heraklion

24 June 2021 Innovation International Press release

On 22 and 23rd June 2021, Naval Group organises the “R&D Partners’Days” at the French Institute in Athens. During this event focusing on R&D initiatives and European projects, Naval Group is holding meetings with industry partners. A second day of workshops will be hosted by FORTH in Heraklion on 24th June 2021.

Naval Group is present in Greece since 2008. As a bidder in the frigates program, Naval Group designed a robust Hellenic Industry Participation plan to develop new capacities in the Greek industry, sustaining several hundreds of highly qualified jobs and generating long-term economic spin-offs in Greece.

Naval Group’s objective is to further develop its local footprint through partnerships with industry, research and academic partner. Beyond the frigates program, Naval Group seeks to support the development of the future Hellenic naval warfare capabilities through R&D projects with Hellenic companies, universities and research institutes in cutting edge technologies such as additive manufacturing, predictive maintenance, drones or naval mission systems.

During an event at the French Embassy in June, Naval Group global CEO Pierre Eric Pommellet explained: “Our ambition is to support Greece becoming a global centre for naval innovation. The R&D partners days are a fantastic opportunity to meet with current and new partners and discuss on-going and future projects in cutting edge domains such as additive manufacturing, predictive maintenance, drones or naval mission systems

On 22 June, during the event in Athens, Naval Group lead one-on-one meetings with several greek companies such as Terra Spatium, FEAC Engineering, B&T Composites or Hellenic Aerospace Industry, as well as with academic partners to discuss, among others topics, drones, advanced materials, technologies for the shipyard of the future or eco-conception and energy savings in the naval domain.

On 23rd June, François-Régis Boulvert, Naval Group International Scientific cooperation Director, presented Naval Group Customer centric approach on innovation and described the structured R&D roadmap, adressing domains such as materials science, cyber security, energy, electronics and Internet of Things.

An example of Research partnership has been presented by Thibault Cassin from ENSTA Bretagne, before a dedicated focus on factory 4.0 by Stephane Klein, Naval Group Technical domain director for smart industry. François-Régis Boulvert   also shared Naval Group’s intake on European opportunities for cooperation with Hellenic partners in the naval domain to leverage the European Defence Fund and Horizon Europe incoming calls.
It was fantastic to feel such an interest from our Hellenic partners to work together. There are plenty of opportunities for  European cooperation and we can build on successes we had with project like Cybermar and Pandora to keep on addressing the needs of the Hellenic Navy and the larger Hellenic and European maritime sectors today and tomorrow”, declared François-Régis Boulvert.

The event will continue on June 24th in Heraklion. FORTH will be hosting workshops to further elaborate on robotics and drones (UxV) subjects with Naval Group experts and French academic partners (ENSTA Bretagne and ENIB) and create perennial academic links.

Naval Group has already signed partnerships with three leading Hellenic universities: the National Technological University of Athens, the University of Patras and Forth Research center.

For companies that could not attend the B to B sessions in Athens and would like to present their vision and discuss opportunities for R&D cooperation, Naval Group will organise dedicated meetings via visioconference in the coming weeks.

Press contact:

Emmanuel GAUDEZ
Tel.: +33 (0)1 40 59 55 69
Mob.: +33 (0)6 61 97 36 63
emmanuel.gaudez@naval-group.com

Dora KHOSROF
Tel.: +33 (0)1 41 08 21 46
Mob.: +33 (0)7 72 42 48 96
dora.khosrof@naval-group.com