French companies to build submarines for Royal Australian Navy.

Global engineering group SEGULA Technologies has formed a partnership with a South Australian engineering consultancy in a bid to win detailed design work in Australia’s Future Submarine Program.

A CGI of the Royal Australian Navy future Attack-class submarine (Picture source: Segula Technologies)

The partnership with Adelaide-based GPA Engineering follows the Australian government’s decision to award Naval Group the contract to design and build 12 Attack Class submarines for the Australian Navy.

South Australia is pivotal in Australia’s $50 billion plan to regenerate the Royal Australian Navy with new submarines, frigates and offshore patrol vessels. The Attack class submarines will be built at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, which is undergoing a $500 million upgrade.

SEGULA Technologies and Naval Group are both headquartered in France and have a long history of working together on surface ship and submarine projects.

GPA Engineering has offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin but the bulk of its 250 staff are based at its Adelaide headquarters. The company formed in the late 1980s and has traditionally focused on major oil and gas projects.

General manager Sean Flaherty said the partnership with SEGULA was a good match that would help it establish as a supplier to Naval Group.

He said GPA was used to working with large companies in South Australia such as BHP, Santos and Oz Minerals and had started to move into defence after identifying it as “the next big thing”.

The SEGULA and GPA teams will present their projects at Pacific 2019 in Sydney from October 8 to 10.