ECA Group announces the acquisition of 60% of the capital of BE Mauric

ECA Group, a Groupe announces that it has acquired 60% of the capital of BE Mauric from Ciranoë, which was the majority shareholder since 2007, following on from Sirehna, the historical shareholder since 1994. Like the other shareholders (including members of the Executive Board), Ciranoë will keep a share in the company.

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 vessels for defence, security, Oil & Gas, fishing, passenger transportation, in addition to sailing. BE Mauric has designed hundreds of naval vessels and is the leading independent naval architect in France. Its customers are chiefly ship owners and shipyards in France and Europe.

In addition to naval architecture, BE Mauric also offers naval engineering services to its clients, and increasingly offers integration services pertaining to specific civil or military systems on the naval platform.

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 systems that are best able to be integrated into vessels, in particular in terms of launching and recovering robots (USV, AUV, ROV, UAV) from a heavy sea. 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.