ECA GROUP announces the acquisition of 60% of the capital of BE MAURIC

Bureau Mauric - Naval architects and naval system integrators

BE Mauric is a naval architecture firm founded in 1945 and based in Marseille and Nantes. It has annual revenue of approximately €2 million and a workforce of 22 people. BE Mauric designs different types of naval and civilian vessels for defence, security, Oil and Gas, fishing, passenger and cargo transportation sectors. BE Mauric has designed hundreds of ships, vessels, fast crafts and is the leading independent naval architect in France. Its customers are shipowners and shipyards in France and Europe.

In addition to naval architecture, BE Mauric also offers marine engineering services to its clients, and increasingly offers integration services for specific civil or military systems on board naval and civilian platforms.

Joining forces to go further together

ECA Group's acquisition of a majority stake will enable BE Mauric to ramp up its international development via the export sales network of ECA Group in the shipping and naval fields, while remaining independent of any shipyard. This acquisition will enable ECA Group:

• to ramp up its development in robot systems: by an amount of up to €30 million per vessel, the comprehensive systems that ECA will now deliver to its customers will have to be fully integrated in the client's vessels. On the one hand, through its expertise and extensive experience in naval vessels, BE Mauric will provide ECA Group with the knowledge to design robots and unmanned systems that are best able to be integrated into vessels, in particular in terms of launch and recovery of naval drones (USV, AUV, ROV, UAV) from heavy seas. On the other hand, through its expertise as an integrator of specific systems for naval vessels, BE Mauric will provide the interface for integrating ECA drones in the vessels of ECA Group customers. These contributions by BE Mauric are essential to customers, since they guarantee a robotized system that is properly integrated in their vessels
• to extend the range of their USVs. BE Mauric will be responsible for studying various USV hulls suited to specific missions that the USV INSPECTOR is unable to perform today
• to study the best possible integration of its naval or air drones, in particular on small naval platforms

This change of majority shareholder in BE Mauric guarantees its independence with respect to shipyards while providing ECA Group with extensive skills towards systems integration of drones and naval vessels. The organization of BE Mauric will still comprise a Supervisory Board and Executive Board. The composition of the Executive Board will remain unchanged. As such, BE Mauric will continue to expand with respect to the various shipyards in France, and abroad with guaranteed operational independence and therefore the utmost confidentiality for each customer project.