Thales and Steyr Mannlicher sign cooperation agreement

25 Jan­u­ary 2012 — Bring­ing togeth­er unique Aus­tralian and Aus­tri­an exper­tise, Thales Aus­tralia and Steyr Mannlich­er have signed an agree­ment to coop­er­ate on glob­al mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties. Steyr Mannlich­er is the orig­i­nal design­er of the Aus­tralian Defence Force’s F88 assault rifle, which was man­u­fac­tured and sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped fur­ther by Thales Australia.

Under the agree­ment the two com­pa­nies will refresh their long­stand­ing coop­er­a­tion in mil­i­tary mar­kets, with Thales Aus­tralia tak­ing the for­mal lead in Aus­tralia and New Zealand. This will ben­e­fit cus­tomers by shar­ing R&D to dri­ve prod­uct improve­ments, work­ing towards com­mon sup­ply chains where appro­pri­ate, and stream­lin­ing ser­vice delivery.

Chris Jenk­ins, Thales Australia’s CEO, said: “This agree­ment rep­re­sents the con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion of our Sol­dier Sys­tems busi­ness. Steyr Mannlich­er has a long his­to­ry and a glob­al mar­ket out­look which, com­bined with our exper­tise deliv­er­ing and upgrad­ing infantry weapons, will allow us to col­lec­tive­ly build on our vast knowl­edge and net­works to offer stream­lined, cost-effec­tive solu­tions to customers.”

“Both com­pa­nies employ world-class weapon design­ers and experts, and our com­bined capa­bil­i­ties will make this a com­pelling team. We have invest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in weapon devel­op­ment in Aus­tralia, and are eager to offer Aus­tralian inno­va­tions through Steyr Mannlich­er to the rest of the world. The cur­rent devel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion weapon under the LAND 125 3C pro­gram is the most recent exam­ple of the inno­v­a­tive work being done at Lithgow.”

Thales Aus­tralia and Steyr Mannlich­er have been work­ing togeth­er since 1986 to deliv­er assault rifles, and since then have con­tin­u­ous­ly improved weapon per­for­mance and enabled the inte­gra­tion of a wide range of third-par­ty acces­sories. The SA2 cur­rent­ly in ser­vice demon­strates the con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion of this capability.

Over the past few years, Thales Aus­tralia has built on its tra­di­tion­al exper­tise in the pre­ci­sion man­u­fac­tur­ing of small arms at the Thales-owned Lith­gow facil­i­ty in New South Wales, to offer a wider range of ser­vices includ­ing engi­neer­ing, design, pro­cure­ment, logis­tics and project man­age­ment. The com­pa­ny also sup­ports a range of third-par­ty weapons cur­rent­ly in use by the Aus­tralian Defence Force.

About Thales
Thales is a glob­al tech­nol­o­gy leader for the Defence & Secu­ri­ty and the Aero­space & Trans­port mar­kets. In 2010, the com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of €13.1 bil­lion (equiv­a­lent of AUD 18.9 bil­lion) with 68,000 employ­ees in 50 coun­tries. With its 22,500 engi­neers and researchers, Thales has a unique capa­bil­i­ty to design, devel­op and deploy equip­ment, sys­tems and ser­vices that meet the most com­plex secu­ri­ty require­ments. Thales has an excep­tion­al inter­na­tion­al foot­print, with oper­a­tions around the world work­ing with cus­tomers as local partners. 

Thales Aus­tralia is a trust­ed part­ner of the Aus­tralian Defence Force and is also present in com­mer­cial sec­tors rang­ing from air traf­fic man­age­ment to secu­ri­ty sys­tems and ser­vices. Employ­ing around 3,300 peo­ple in over 35 sites across the coun­try, Thales Aus­tralia record­ed rev­enues of around AUD 900 mil­lion in 2010.

About Steyr Mannlich­er
Orig­i­nat­ing from a tra­di­tion­al loca­tion in Steyr, Aus­tria, which was epony­mous for the enter­prise, Steyr Mannlich­er expand­ed to an inter­na­tion­al entre­pre­neur­ial group with premis­es in Aus­tria and the USA. High-qual­i­ty mil­i­tary & law enforcement‑, hunt­ing- and sport­ing rifles are devel­oped and world­wide mar­ket­ed by Steyr Mannlicher.

The pre­ci­sion and trend-set­ting prod­uct devel­op­ment of Steyr Mannlich­er is always and every­where in demand. Spe­cial Forces in many coun­tries trust the pre­ci­sion and reli­a­bil­i­ty of Steyr Mannlich­er rifles. Cus­tom made solu­tions for the par­tic­u­lar user are found by direct con­tact and prompt co-oper­a­tion with gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties all over the world.
http://www.mannlicher.at/