The story
Stelia Aerospace traces its origins to the merger of two companies, SOGERMA and Aerolia. SOGERMA (Société girondine d’entretien et de réparation de matériel aéronautique) was a French company founded in 1924 amid the early days of aviation.
Prior to its restructuring in 2006, the company largely focused on maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), but subsequently directed its resources to its specialist aerostructures and seating activities.
Aerolia SA was founded on 1 January 2009 as a spin-off of Airbus France's aerostructures activities. This involved the Méaulte and Saint-Nazaire industrial plants, along with a design office in Toulouse.
In 2007, EADS' management decided to respond to the weakening US dollar and large investments required for the Airbus A380 and A350 XWB programs by restructuring in order to streamline, divest several non-core activities, and cut costs. Aerospace periodical Flight International compared the move to Boeing's then-recent spin-off of Spirit AeroSystems.
On 1 January 2015, Stelia Aerospace was created via the merger of Aerolia and Sogerma. At the time, Stelia Aerospace employed roughly 6,100 staff across 11 different locations, and the two merged businesses were considered "complementary". Contracts previously undertaken by the two firms carried over to the new entity, including those for fitting-out work on Airbus airliners.
In March 2017, Stelia Aerospace inaugurated a new aeronautics factory in Méaulte, Northern France; this facility, which handles production of the forward fuselages of Airbus airliners and central fuselage of Bombardier Aerospace’s Global 7500 series of business jets, had required a €70 million investment. In February 2018, Stelia Aerospace demonstrated a metallic fuselage panel manufactured using 3D printing techniques. The same year, the firm acquired a majority share of Toulouse-based digital modelling specialist Portalliance Engineering.
In October 2019, Stelia Aerospace announced plans to build a new assembly plant in Portugal at a cost of €40 million. In February 2020, the company started a three-year partnership with Bombardier for the AILE (Aile Intelligente et Légère pour l’Environnement, or Intelligent and Light Wing for Environment) research programme.
Starting on 1 January 2022, Stelia Aerospace sites worldwide were grouped with other Airbus sites in Nantes and Montoir-de-Bretagne under the newly formed Airbus subsidiary Airbus Atlantic.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sogerma, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3