Page 26 - ADT JULY - AUGUST 2022 Online Magazine

Consistent Growth it in UK and Turkey as well. We are not driven [ REPORT ]
The company, founded in 1936, has evolved over the years, with by the quarter, but by passion. If you do some-
the most significant period arriving at the turn of the century when thing with passion, your numbers are going to
the new ownership took over. The focus on investing in technology be good.”
soon started paying dividends, with the company becoming a part-
ner in the development of major international programs such as
the Eurofighter Typhoon, Tornado, and M-346. A major milestone Focused on the West
happened in 2012, when the company acquired Brazilian firm Friuli The Asia Pacific is one of the most sought-after
Aerospace to set up Magnaghi do Brazil, which supplies compo- markets for most companies, but MA Group
nents for many Embraer platforms. In 2018, the company acquired is not focusing on the region, at least not yet.
US-based Blair HSM, which will fulfill the production of the landing ”For the market that we are targeting, we feel
gear for the Defiant X program. the West is our main market,” says Iannotti. “Of
course, we are focused on NATO countries,
“This is a starting point of what I call the second phase,” says Brazil as well. Turkey makes a lot of sense
Graziano. “We had the future vertical lift program in mind when we because they are launching new programs.
acquired Blair-HSM in 2018. It feels good when a strategic move We have established a permanent industrial
pays off. Our U.S. subsidiary has grown substantially; we are already footprint in the country and will set up a military
about 50 per cent bigger now, growing every year.” MRO facility in association with the govern-
ment. We feel we have enough work in these
markets to keep ourselves busy. We are work-
Point of Difference ing in Korea a little bit, but in terms of market
Graziano is keen to stress what set the company apart from others penetration, Asia is a complicated world.”
in the field. “We are a system integrator, but we do not buy every-
thing,” he says. “We produce almost everything inhouse. We do The company’s aerostructure business has
everything, from the small parts to special processes ourselves. been impacted by the pandemic, but the landing
We test inhouse our own components. That helps us prevent delay gear systems has largely remained untouched.
in development. It is important to control you own destiny.” “For landing gear systems, we are concentrated
Being smaller compared to many of its competitors brings with it on small and medium fixed wing aircraft, up to
its own challenges. “Attracting talent is sometimes hard, but it helps the regional market,” says Iannotti. “Those were
that we are a part of many notable programs,” says Iannotti. “We flying event during the pandemic. The helicop-
grow our own engineers as well and gave important relationships ter and defence market weren’t impacted much
with universities on both sides of the ocean. We have an internal by Covid at all. The aerostructure business has
academy where we hire and train engineers. They get to work on taken a hit, but thankfully, we have not faced
the programs that we are a part of.” big problems with orders. We have had supply
chain issues and still continue to deal with them.
The company’s business model of having an industrial footprint I would say that we are dealing with a delay of
close to the customer has worked across regions, says Graziano. about 12-14 months, compared to our business
“We did that in Brazil, in the U.S., and also in Europe. We are doing plan.”

26 | July/August 2022 WWW .GBP .COM.SG/ ADT