Daher launches Shap’In Innovation Center near Nantes

The facility will allow Daher to consolidate its composite and aerospace technologies and minimize its environmental footprint. It will be built on Daher’s existing site at Saint-Aignan-de-Grandlieu in the Jules Verne industrial innovation cluster near Nantes, France.

It is expected to open in October 2022.

The 17,200-plus-square-foot facility is projected to cost $8.4 million, approximately $900,000 of which came from the French Aerospace Industry Modernization Fund. 

At the ceremony, Daher CEO Didier Kayat praised the France Relance national recovery plan that accelerated the process.

“Shap'In further underlines our determination to embrace the future and will showcase how our technological expertise feeds into a cutting-edge French industry,” Kayat said.  

Daher says it will hire 160 people for the facility, half of which will work on research and development geared toward advanced composites.

This move will allow Daher to advance its position in the composite market while improving operational efficiencies by co-locating this facility with its other centers. The company has called thermoplastics “true game changers” because of their reliability, affordability, and sustainability as airframe materials. The lighter material is known to offer massive improvements in performance for airplanes. 

Daher will be able to bolster its competitive supply-chain position as it also serves as an aerostructures subcontractor for Airbus (DXE: AIR), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Dassault (OTCMKTS: DUAVF), Gulfstream Aerospace (NYSE: GD), and others. 

The global composites market size is projected to grow from the US $88 billion in 2021 to $126 billion by 2026. The aerospace composite market meanwhile is projected to be just 12 percent of that, or $16 billion, by 2027. 

Daher says Shap’In will look to integrate three things to maximize its operation at the center: 

It attributes its expertise to its production teams, consolidated material laboratories, and modernizing production processes. 

Meanwhile, Shap’In equipment and resources focus is to shorten the gap between R&D and production by housing the laboratories and production lines under one roof, which Daher believes will be an advantage over competitors with scattered supply chains. 

Plus, its open innovation strategy will allow select partners to use Daher’s new facilities to test their own developments.

Finally, Daher wants to leverage the burgeoning status of Nantes. Nantes is the sixth-largest city in France but follows only Toulouse as an aeronautic hub. A fast-growing incubator city, Nantes was ranked as a Gamma city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network in 2020. Gamma cities are considered to be economically and technologically advanced hubs.

Daher also has plans to launch a logistics infrastructure—Log’In in Toulouse and Fly’In, an aircraft product development center in Tarbes.

“We are putting the needed resources in place for Daher to remain at the forefront of our industry, while also ensuring our status as a key player in tomorrow’s low-carbon aviation sector,” Kayat said.