NAVIRIS, the 50/50 joint venture company between Fincantieri and Naval Group in charge of development of cooperation programs, and NAVANTIA have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at enlarging the industrial cooperation for the European Patrol Corvette (EPC) program, the most important naval initiative within the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) project.
The EPC will be a smart, innovative, affordable, sustainable, interoperable and flexible vessel to meet the future missions in the evolved world context of mid-21st century. EPC will be a fully ready surface combatant to carry-out diversified missions, primarily aimed at enhancing maritime situational awareness, surface superiority and power projection, particularly in the context of governmental peacetime actions, such as those aimed at counteracting piracy and smuggling, as well as those actions dedicated to humanitarian assistance, migration control and aimed at ensuring freedom of navigation.
The EPC will be about 100 meters and 3.000 tons, able to replace in the near future (from 2027 onward) several classes of ships, from patrol vessels to light frigates. The design requirements for these vessels, with a clear objective of commonality of solutions and modularity for adaptation to national requirements, are expected from the Navies in 2021.
On the industrial side, NAVIRIS and NAVANTIA will act in a fully coordinated way with Fincantieri and Naval Group for the EPC program. The studies could potentially benefit from European Union and national funds and will include a large part of R&D leading to innovative solutions for making easier the co-development and interoperability, the efficiency of the vessels in operations and the digital data management.
The ambition of the project, which has been joined so far by four Countries at PESCO level, (Italy as coordinator, France, Spain and Greece), is to include other European partners to integrate technological bricks, which correspond to innovation streams matching with national EPC requirements and European Commission strategy and guidelines.
The Spanish shipbuilder NAVANTIA is a world reference in the design, building and integration ofhighly technological state-of-the-art war ships for the Spanish Navy, which makes it a strategiccompany, and for the international market. Its activities include the design and manufacture ofIntegrated Platform Management Systems, Fire Control Systems, Command and Control systems,Propulsion Plants and through life support for all its products. NAVANTIA has also taken stepstowards diversification and has become a relevant actor in the area of offshore wind power.
NAVIRIS is a 50/50 owned joint venture by Fincantieri and Naval Group, officially launched inJanuary 2020. With this alliance bringing new opportunities to the surface ship market, Fincantieriand Naval Group have cemented their joint desire to build a future of excellence for theshipbuilding industry and navies. The two European leaders with complementary offers, supportedby a large ecosystem, came together to better serve the world’s navies and mutually increase theircompetitive edge. They are materializing their shared worldwide ambition: the alliance is based ona mutual understanding of the challenges and realities of naval defense in the world of today.
NAVIRIS is dedicated to opening the doors to the international markets of tomorrow.
