Jean Loïc Galle, President and CEO of Thales Alenia Space, and Nikolay Testoedov, General Designer and General Director of ISS – Reshetnev Company, signed an agreement on February 28 for the creation of a Joint Venture between their two companies.
The signing of the agreement took place in Moscow, in a ceremony attended by leading authorities from France and Russia, including presidents François Hollande and Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Federal space agency (Roskosmos), and Jean de Gliniasty., French ambassador to Russia.
The new company, incorporated under Russian law and with ISS holding a majority stake, will be based in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. It marks the first phase of the bilateral collaboration targeted by the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the two companies in November 2011, during the French-Russian intergovernmental conference in Moscow.
The jointly-owned company will initially focus on the production of equipment meeting the most demanding international standards for use on Russian telecommunications satellites. It will then work on the development of new products for satellites, enabling it to more completely address the requirements of both Russian and international markets in the future, where ISS, in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space, has already won several business opportunities.
“Our collaboration with Thales Alenia Space is an example of mutually advantageous attitudes. Creating the Joint Venture enabling to manufacture some components of payload domestically, we expect to get an access to new niche in the market of Russia and abroad”, said Nikolay Testoedov, General Designer and General Director of ISS – Reshetnev Company.
This initiative clearly reflects a long-standing commitment of the French (CNES) and Russian (Roskosmos) space agencies; one where the French space industry has been reactive since the 1990s especially through the joint work undertaken by Thales Alenia Space and ISS. "Today's initiative culminates some 20 years of joint success with our partner ISS and over 20 jointly built satellites," said Jean Loïc Galle, President and CEO of Thales Alenia Space.
