With a 70+ year heritage in world class engineering, Thales in Northern Ireland is a leading high technology company in the defence and space sectors. It employs more than 900 people across four UK sites, with the majority at its main site in Belfast.
Thales is a major contributor to the economy contributing £151 million to the UK GDP, of which £81 million is in Northern Ireland. It also spends on average £46 million with UK suppliers, including nearly £6 million with businesses in Northern Ireland.
Through the design and production of high precision, high volume effectors and fire control systems, as well as the integration of weapons onto tactical platforms, Thales in Northern Ireland has developed into a centre of excellence for Thales’s air defence and surface strike solutions.
The origins of Thales in Northern Ireland stem from the establishment of the Short Brothers aerospace company in Belfast in the 1930s and its subsequent missile division formed in 1952. Shorts was bought by Bombardier in 1989, and in 1993, together with the French company Thomson-CSF, began the design and development of next generation short-range air defence missiles known as Shorts Missile Systems. In 1998 Thomson-CSF became the company’s sole owner, and in 2000 it was rebranded as Thales.
Today Thales in Northern Ireland is also home to Thales Alenia Space – Propulsion Competence Centre. It was established because of the high precision engineering skills already present, and has become a key manufacturing hub for UK space technology.
Thales Alenia Space delivered the first all-electric propulsion module designed and built in the UK for the Spacebus Neo Xenon Propulsion System (XPS) communications satellite, demonstrating its strength in the UK’s dynamic and growing space sector.
Thales has a strong commitment to investing in Northern Ireland’s future talent. It supports research at one of Northern Ireland’s leading universities, Queens University Belfast, on a wide range of topics including: cybersecurity, AI, aerodynamics and advanced networking and communications, and partners with Ulster University through its Skills Academy offering apprentices the opportunity to study for Engineering Degrees, with plans for further collaborations.
In 2023, Thales opened the doors to its Skills Academy in Northern Ireland to 35 apprentices, to help attract, retain and develop critical skills. Apprentices are key to succession planning within the business and promote a more diverse and inclusive workforce. The Academy provides support for the learning, development and upskilling of all employees, as well as impacting the local community.
For further information about the Skills Academy please contact: AcademyNI@uk.thalesgroup.com
Thales has a strong commitment to invest in Northern Ireland’s future talent. We support research at one of Northern Ireland’s leading universities, Queens University Belfast, on a wide range of topics, including cyber security, aerodynamics and advanced networking and communications.
In addition, Thales offers Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) outreach through its Skills Academy to primary and secondary schools across Northern Ireland, including four partner schools.
Thales also works with numerous STEM partners, including Smallpeice Trust, STEMettes (inspiring and supporting girls, women and non-binary people in STEM) and SistersIN Mentoring programme for girls In STEM.
We also work with Primary Engineer and Secondary Engineer Leaders Award for Northern Ireland, giving local school pupils the chance to meet engineers from Thales and design potential solutions to engineering challenges.
Read more about our work in STEM here.
Thales provides support and funding to universities and research institutions across the UK and we see the potential for future collaborations with Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster increasing as the space centre becomes more established.
One doctorate student sponsored by Thales is Rachael Abbott, who is undertaking an PHD at Queens University Belfast. Through her studies she aims to create an algorithm for object detection in cluttered urban scenes, which is currently a challenging task.
Rachel explained: “The goal of my current work is to create an algorithm that can detect in Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) imagery without requiring a huge LWIR training dataset which is expensive and time consuming to collect. To solve this problem, we make use of RGB data which is already abundantly available and use unsupervised learning techniques to adapt to the LWIR modality.”
The work will be of interest to the defence community as a high-performing automatic recognition system is a sought-after capability.
Thales is the first manufacturing prime contractor moving into the space arena in Northern Ireland and so it has acted as a catalyst to promote the development of space capability among local suppliers, most of which are SMEs. Some 30 firms have now set up a Space Special Interest Group to grow the sector in Northern Ireland.
CCP Gransden is a leading specialist in advanced composite manufacture in Northern Ireland that started working with Thales after taking part in a joint research project that was organised through the Northern Ireland Advanced Composites and Engineering Centre.
Jim Erskine, Managing Director of CCP Gransden, said: “Thales have taken us under their wing and have been extremely supportive in a number of areas, from prompt payments, to sharing development costs and introducing us to other opportunities where composites can be used. We have also gained hugely from the fact that Thales are located only 15 minutes from our offices as this has enabled us to work very collaboratively with a high level of trust."
"We are the first company in Northern Ireland that Thales has sponsored to carry out the Supplier Chains for the 21st Century (SC21) Supplier Certification Programme. The scheme helps suppliers to meet certain standards of quality, delivery and good business practice, whilst raising the performance of aerospace and defence industry supply chains."
"One of the products that we make for Thales is a missile system filament wound launch canister which is assembled from over 50 different parts. Over 50% of these parts are made locally, which demonstrates how the benefits of our partnership with Thales are being shared across Northern Ireland."