Aequs, an emerging global player in aerospace manufacturing supply chain, has made a minority equity investment in the Farinia Group's Spartacus3D, an upcoming French company specializing in Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM), more commonly known as 3D printing technology.
"As cutting-edge manufacturing technology, ALM offers tremendous potential for creating new manufacturing capabilities and economies of scale and scope. ALM provides a means for creating complex, high-mix, and low-volume parts that would be impossible or cost prohibitive using traditional subtractive manufacturing techniques, such as machining," said Aravind Melligeri, Chairman and CEO of Aequs.
"ALM's potential for reducing the cost of production changeovers and customization and for increasing the variety of products each unit of capital can produce, makes it a compelling innovation for the aerospace and defence (A&D) industry, which in contrast to other industries, is more reliant upon low volume production."
This partnership brings to market the combined aerospace manufacturing prowess of Aequs and technical ALM expertise of Spartacus3D to provide A&D industry customers new supply chain options unavailable elsewhere. "Both traditional subtractive manufacturing and ALM offer distinct advantages and disadvantages in manufacturing speed, scope, scale, capital intensity, and cost," said Aravind Melligeri.
"By adding ALM to our already broad value chain capabilities - engineering, machining, forging, fabrication, surface treatment and assembly - we create greater manufacturing flexibility and cost effectiveness to serve the particular needs of each of our A&D customers."
The leaders of both Aequs and Farinia believe that the partnership will create synergy in aerospace manufacturing and accelerate further innovation in the aerospace supply chain.
"We expect our partnership to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace manufacturing and produce higher levels of customer customization, on-demand responsiveness, and product complexity at competitive costs," said Frédéric Guinot, CEO of Farinia Group. "We are excited about the possibilities."
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