Aero Montreal, Quebec's aerospace cluster, today signed a mutual collaboration agreement with the European Aerospace Cluster Partnership (EACP) and Hamburg Aviation. This agreement was signed at the EACP Annual General Meeting, attended by all the European clusters and held in Braunschweig, Germany.

With this agreement, Aero Montreal is reaffirming its positioning with several clusters in Europe, with which it has signed collaboration agreements in the past, and paving the way for new business collaborations. Signed with all the European aerospace clusters, the agreement will enable Quebec companies to establish closer ties with companies across the Atlantic. In a context of internationalization of supply chains, this agreement will provide a competitive advantage for companies in the Quebec supply chain.

"This agreement will give our companies access to a network of 40 European aerospace clusters representing 4,300 companies and 430 research centres in 15 different countries," explains Suzanne M. Benoit, President of Aero Montreal. "This is an extraordinary opportunity for us to identify the needs of companies in the other clusters and to enable our Quebec companies to offer them value-added products and services."

The collaboration agreement signed today was concluded with the help of Hamburg Aviation, the German aerospace cluster, which supported Aero Montreal's participation in this major meeting. With a goal of becoming more international, EACP is increasingly turning to the most efficient aerospace clusters located outside Europe.

"Aero Montreal's vision is to become a global benchmark in aerospace," says Ms. Benoit. "We are working to develop major agreements such as this one to further promote and facilitate the internationalization of our SMEs. The objective is to foster closer ties between our SMEs and their customers abroad. We also want to encourage mergers and acquisitions so that our companies can attain a critical mass and offer competitive products and services in the global aerospace market."