STELIA Aerospace takes over Portalliance Engineering and strengthens its position as an innovative Tier1 supplier on the aerostructure market

STELIA Aerospace has just accomplished its first external growth operation, by taking over Portalliance Engineering (PE), an SME founded in 2006 and focused on modelisation and digital simulation of structural calculation. The start-up employs 27 engineers and its revenue for 2017 was 2 million euros.

STELIA Aerospace has been supporting Portalliance Engineering's development for several years, mostly by bringing its aerostructure expertise to the development of innovative tools, enabling a very significative reduction of development cycles while improving the optimisation of complex structures. A strategic partnership based on these innovative digital solutions has been subsequently set up since January 2016. This majority stake acquisition is therefore a logical step and will enable STELIA Aerospace to benefit sustainably from this new technology and strengthen its position on the aerostructures market.

With this purchase, Portalliance Engineering becomes a subsidiary of STELIA Aerospace and will strengthen the latter's position and expertise in the field of modelisation and calculation of structures through finite elements.

Bruce de WITT, CEO of Portalliance, welcomed "the realisation of this partnership, a real recognition of the technological expertise of our start-up. This will enable the company to widen its field of application and therefore serve the interests of the aeronautical market".

Cedric GAUTIER, STELIA Aerospace CEO, said: "In these times of digitalisation, and in order to better address our customers expectances, accelerating our calculation capacity is a business differentiator for STELIA Aerospace and will enable us to achieve shortened development times and lower design costs. Therefore the acquisition of Portalliance Engineering is a great opportunity for STELIA Aerospace, as we invest today for the future of engineering in order to take up the challenges of cost and cycle for our future development".