As the new year begins, we wanted to ask our CEO how he reflects on 2024 and what his vision for 2025 is.
What are your main takeaways from 2024 and how do they influence your 2025 strategy?
Last year demonstrated the relevance of our long-term strategy and business positioning: the combination of safety, cybersecurity and sustainability expertise is unique on the market and meets growing expectations, particularly in aerospace, but also more broadly in the transportation and critical industries.
In these areas of expertise, we have worked with a variety of players; from new entrants in aviation (such as Aura Aero), to airlines (SAS) and the aviation regulator (EASA), through suppliers and partners of the aerospace and defence value chain (MBDA); all this demonstrates our agility to support a wide range of needs and contributes to us building strong credibility with our customers.
Now that our brand is established and recognised, our ambition for 2025 is to expand our presence in Europe and prepare for potential acquisitions.
What was your main highlight in 2024?
The Airbus Protect “summer tour” of 2024, visiting our seven main locations in Spain, Germany, the UK and France, celebrated the 2-year anniversary of the company. It was a great moment shared by our 1,600 colleagues. It was a great moment being able to have the leadership team present all the achievements from the past two years and exchange with all the employees, as well as present what we intend to do in the future! Seeing their enthusiasm was the best possible reward for the leadership team and for myself.
What steps did Airbus Protect take in 2024 to advance its sustainability and corporate social responsibility goals, and what are your plans for 2025 in this area?
It was back in 2023 that we defined our CSR policy and the plan to be implemented. This plan includes 14 initiatives. Actions are as varied as the deployment of“Climate Fresk” trainings (in France, Germany and in the UK), the negotiation of energy contracts based on renewable sources, or the support to breast cancer associations.
In 2025, we will continue our CSR plan and will put a particular emphasis on sustainable commuting, defining ways to have a more responsible approach to how we view and use transportation (carpooling, biking, common transportation, etc), as commuting has been identified as one of the main sources of the company’s carbon footprint.
How do you see the aerospace industry evolving in 2025 and what steps will Airbus Protect take to stay ahead of emerging trends and challenges?
The aerospace industry is facing multiple challenges. The demand in aerospace and in aviation is steadily growing, putting the supply chain under pressure – this while cyber threats are becoming more and more pressing and sophisticated, notably due to the trivialisation of AI.
At the same time, the aviation industry is in its 4th revolution: after the revolution of motorised flight at the beginning of the 20th century, the development of commercial aviation in the 1940s, the democratisation of air travel in the 1980s, now the decarbonisation of aviation is underway.
Airbus Protect has all the assets and expertise to support the industry in meeting these challenges. This expertise is also relevant to other manufacturing companies and large industries.
What are your top goals and priorities for 2025 and how do you plan to achieve them?
Our 2025 priorities remain to strengthen our position in our home countries, to effectively support our customers in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, and to prepare for potential acquisitions.
For this, we plan to reinforce our cybersecurity capacities to help even more companies and institutions to protect their infrastructures and comply with new European regulations, such as Part-IS, and to boost the expertise of our teams to cope even better with new AI generated threats.
We also plan to further support aerospace and aviation companies in developing sustainability strategies, including eco-design, life cycle assessment and decarbonisation.
Regarding safety, we will expand our areas of intervention, for example by bringing our expertise to the so-called New Space sector.
Last but not least, in terms of innovation, we will continue to invest in new technologies – with a strong focus on further extending the concrete use of generative AI – and to anticipate the future needs of our customers.