Thales Australia welcomes torpedo support contract
Thales Australia welcomes the announcement by Defence Industry Minister Melissa Price to award a $20m contract to maintain the Royal Australian Navy’s MU90 Light Weight torpedo, demonstrating Thales’s established capability in Australia to sustain guided munitions and weapons systems.
The MU90 has been successfully supported by Thales Australia’s facility in Rockingham, Western Australia, since it entered into service with the Navy in 2013.
The renewal of the in-service support contract for 3 years will be delivered utilising 100% Australian Industry Capability (AIC), and will directly support jobs with Thales in Western Australia, and more in Thales’s local WA supply chain.
Over the past decade, Thales has built a sovereign industrial capability in WA to ensure Australia has the capability to fully support the MU90 torpedo.
In addition to the 140 people employed directly by Thales in Western Australia, a further 110 people are employed by Thales’s WA suppliers, according to recent analysis by Accenture. In 2020, Thales spent $23m with 86 West Australian suppliers, almost three-quarters of them SMEs.
By maintaining deep industrial capability, a high level of skills and an established local supply chain, Thales is able to provide around the clock support for Navy. We are pleased that the Commonwealth’s assessment found Thales’s offer to be a high quality and value-for-money solution.
