French Naval defence and marine renewable energy company Naval Group has unveiled its vision for the development of the Dutch submarine community at the Defence & Security exhibition held at Rotterdam AHOY.
The project is expected to generate a workload of 15 million man-hours and create more than 2,000 jobs in the Netherlands.
The Naval Group has committed to submarine IP and knowledge-sharing with the Dutch knowledge centres and industry. This will enable the Netherlands submarine community to participate in the design and build phase, leading to the autonomous maintenance and upgrade of the Walrus-class submarine.
The French company has adopted this methodology in Australia, resulting in the development of capacity with a Barracuda-family submarine, which offers acoustic superiority and expeditionary capabilities.
Sharing the company’s vision of the future submarine project, Naval Group chairman and CEO Hervé Guillou said at NEDS: “What is at stake in this project is not industrial workload for Naval Group in France as our submarines factories will be quite busy along the next decades, but the European cooperation within the maritime industry of our two countries.
“Beyond the industrial workload which will be transferred to the Netherlands, Naval Group is totally committed to support the Netherlands in remaining fully autonomous on operational, strategical and technological aspects on the long- term basis.”
The company has already selected 30 companies to be Tier 1 and 2 suppliers for the programme.
Naval Group announced a partnership with Royal IHC in February 2019 to jointly design and manufacture complex maritime and defence systems. This aims to offer the best submarine to the Netherlands and comply with the Defense Industrial Strategy (DIS).
The French company has unveiled a strategic partnership with Contour to develop simulation tools to ease the crew’s training period before the actual submarine is sent on trials.
It has also identified over 30 partners to provide critical systems and components for submarine and surface ships programmes.
