Avio announced 17 April that it had received €90 million in new orders from MBDA Italy for boosters that will be used aboard Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles.
The slate of new orders comes after MBDA awarded Avio 40 million for a pair of contracts in August 2022. One of those contracts was intended to allow Avio to increase the production of boosters for the Aster 30 missile system for “a European and NATO member state.” The press release at the time did not reveal the identity of the member state.
While Avio continues to receive contracts both in its defence and space verticals, officials from Italy’s Democratic Party have this week questioned a number of elements of Avio’s operations relating to several issues including if cost-cutting schemes and quality control issues caused a pair of Vega failures.
Italian financial publication Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor reported 19 April that the questions were raised by deputy of the Partito Democratico (PD) and former Minister of Labor, Andrea Orlando to the Chamber of Deputies to the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and to the Minister of Enterprise, Adolfo Urso. According to the publication, the PD deputy directly referenced European Spaceflight’s “Avio under the microscope” investigation that was published as the featured article in issue 49 of our Europe in Space newsletter in his questioning.
In addition to the pair of Vega failures, topics of the PD deputy’s questioning included Avio share buybacks, CEO compensation, and the conflict of interest arising from the CEO’s founding and major ownership of In Orbit S.p.A., which is a major Avio shareholder.
