On July 2, 2014, Antoine Bouvier, MBDA’s Chief Executive Officer, in the presence of civil and military authorities, inaugurated France’s complex munitions demilitarisation facility at MBDA’s Bourges Subdray site in the Centre region of France.

Having set up this facility in only two years, MBDA is in line with the schedule aimed at allowing France to fulfill the commitment it made in signing the Oslo Convention in July 2009. The Convention prohibits the use and stockpile of cluster bombs and calls for all signatories to have destroyed their stock of such military hardware by 2018.

Notified in November 2011 by the NATO Support Agency, NATO’s Integrated Logistics and Services Provider Agency, on behalf of the French Ministry of Defence, the contract awarded to MBDA covers the destruction of 36,000 complex munitions and the establishment of a French industrial capability for munitions demilitarisation.

The new facility represents an investment of around 12 million euros and the creation of 20 new, direct jobs in the Centre region of France. It also represents MBDA’s response to the French Government’s desire to set up an end of life munitions dismantling capability on home territory in order to guarantee the confidentiality of its products, the safety standards associated with pyrotechnic operations and the protection of the environment.