Gripen opens up for Norwegian-Swedish Helicopter cooperation
Saab AB and Heli-One AS in Norway have today signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding the international helicopter support market. The possible future Norwegian procurement of the Gripen fighter aircraft has paved the way for a co-operation between Heli-One and Saab to capture future contracts for helicopter support in the Nordic countries.
This MoU is the latest example of an increased collaboration between Swedish and Norwegian industry. The two companies, Saab and Heli-One have already begun to explore mutual business opportunities. One possible approach is to promote the Heli-One Stavanger facilities in Norway as the preferred center for training, maintenance and logistic support of the NH90 helicopters for the Swedish Defense Forces.
“Saab Aerotech and Heli-One have participated in several discussions regarding more intensified collaboration and we are very pleased to now have this agreement in place”, states Lars-Erik Wige, President of the Saab Aerotech.
“Since we started our discussions with the Norwegian authorities regarding the Gripen fighter, we have seen an enormous interest among Swedish and Norwegian companies, both in the military and the civil sector, resulting in huge potential for increased cooperation within Scandinavia.” says Kjell Möller Saab Vice President and Managing Director for Saab Industrial Cooperation.
“Heli-One has a long standing record in providing training, maintenance and logistic support to both commercial and military helicopter operators worldwide. Swedish Defence Forces is already a major customer of Heli-One regarding support of their Super Puma helicopters. In order to capture new business opportunities from our Swedish customer as well as for other helicopter operators, we see this partnering with Saab as a major step”, states Jens Kørte, Managing Director of Heli-One (Norway) AS.
Heli-One is a division within the CHC Helicopter Corporation Group and provides helicopter maintenance and logistic support for CHC’s fleet of helicopters and for civil and military operator’s world wide. Heli-One (Norway) AS is a company in the Heli-One group and is located in Stavanger, Norway.
Saab serves the global market with world-leading products, services and solutions ranging from military defence to civil security. Saab has operations and employees on all continents and constantly develops, adopts and improves new technology to meet customers’ changing needs.