ESI Opens a New R&D Center for the Simulation of Composites Design, Manufacturing and Performance in Bordeaux, France

ESI Group: ISIN FR0004110310

To reinforce its Composites activities, ESI has recently opened its sixth French office, grouping its expertise in this field in a single location: Bordeaux. The new office, located in Bordeaux AEROPARC, managed by Bordeaux Technowest and the regional and departmental institutions, is ESI’s new worldwide Research & Development Center for the simulation of Composites design, manufacturing and performance.

Offering dedicated industrial software enabling the simulation of the design, performance and manufacturing of composites components, ESI’s Composites Simulation Suite allows the realistic description of the formed part that enables accurate mechanical performances analysis. With industry-oriented applications especially for Aeronautics, Automotive, Energy and Marine industries, ESI’s Composites Simulation Suite responds to its customers’ needs by reducing tooling and process costs, minimizing material waste, increasing productivity and speeding-up time-to-market.

Why Bordeaux?

There are two main reasons behind this choice.

First of all, the combined interests of the Aquitaine and the Midi-Pyrénées regions have resulted in South-Western France offering the most powerful competitiveness cluster for Aerospace activity in Europe: the Aerospace Valley. Indeed, with 94 000 employees, the cluster is Europe’s largest employer for Aerospace and related activities. The region is also home to the largest aerospace companies in the world, with all civil and military activities represented, including which Airbus, Dassault Aviation and EADS Astrium.

Second, Bordeaux is a prime location for Innovation and R&D counting 11 000 researchers and the highest R&D expenditure per inhabitant in France. Scientific R&D being one of the key priorities for the region, Bordeaux Technowest enables close partnerships between innovative companies and research centers in the aeronautics and aerospace sector, and thus helps strengthen the aviation cluster in connection with its industry partners including CEA, CNES, ONERA, Snecma Propulsion Solide, and THALES. Bordeaux AEROPARC and Bordeaux Technowest intervene in financial development as well as technological transfer and assists in the set-up and implementation of new enterprises.

ESI’s initiatives in Bordeaux

ESI’s Composites activities will see further rapid development thanks to new collaborations which will be soon created with local research centers. Some of ESI’s key objectives in Bordeaux are to:

• Set-up strong partnerships with the local scientific community (R&D projects, material databases, cloud computing , …)
• Develop training courses in the field of composite materials with the universities of the Aquitaine region and provide access to academic licenses
• Facilitate the access of small, medium enterprises and innovation centers in the region to ESI software and services
• Foster innovation especially, in the aerospace and wind energy sectors.

The opening ceremony of ESI's new worldwide R&D Center in Bordeaux will take place on Friday June 25^th 2010. To attend, please contact marketing.composites@esi-group.com.

For more information, visit:

www.technowest.com

www.bordeaux-region.com/en

www.esi-group.com/composites

About ESI Group

ESI is a pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping that takes into account the physics of materials. ESI has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry-oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and to evaluate the environment’s impact on performance. ESI’s solutions fit into a single collaborative and open environment for End-to-End Virtual Prototyping, thus eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company employs over 750 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in compartment C of NYSE Euronext Paris. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

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