After an exclusive negotiation process that began in December 2021, Orolia — a company recognized globally for its positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and related activities, technologies and equipment — has joined Safran Electronics & Defense.
Orolia employs more than 435 people in Europe and North America and has revenues of around €100 million. Its solutions include atomic clocks, time servers, simulation and resilience equipment for GNSS signals, as well as emergency locator beacons for commercial aviation and military applications. These make Orolia a highly complementary and synergistic part of Safran Electronics & Defense’s activities as it meets the challenges of positioning, navigation and synchronization in contested and vulnerable environments.
In most situations, GNSS systems are the reference providers of time and position data. Still, they need to be secured by combining them with accurate, high-integrity autonomous time or inertial references.
Through this partnership with Orolia, a foremost provider of time management solutions, Safran Electronics & Defense, a leader in positioning and navigation solutions, will offer a complete and cohesive set of resilient PNT architectures and equipment to meet the challenges of integrity and robustness for the aviation, defense, space, transportation, new mobility and critical infrastructure markets.
“Orolia could not imagine a better fit than with Safran to secure its growth and leverage its PNT leadership positions,” said Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia. “Thanks to the addition of best-in-class timing and inertial technologies, premier access to the largest defense and aerospace markets, and a proven track record in government program capture and execution, Safran and Orolia now have all the cards in hand to establish themselves as the Resilient PNT leader.”
Martin Sion, CEO of Safran Electronics & Defense, said: “The acquisition of Orolia makes Safran one of the only companies with the full complement of PNT technologies, bringing together Orolia’s precise time referencing and Safran Electronics & Defense’s proven inertial navigation solutions. Our shared ambition is to become the world leader in resilient PNT for all conventional and strategic applications.”