Thales UK’s new headquarters in Green Park, Reading, pictured, were officially opened during a visit by the Prime Minister and Maidenhead MP Theresa May and the local MP Alok Sharma. The defence and cyber product firm says its new facility represents a £23m investment and builds on a long term commitment to the UK.
Hosted by Victor Chavez, Chief Executive of Thales in the UK and Pierre Eric Pommellet, Chief Operating Officer of Thales Group, the visitors were taken on a tour of the research and technology centre.
The Prime Minister was shown a number of key projects including the European Aviation Network, which will provide 4G connectivity on flights across Europe and some of the lifesaving capabilities developed for the armed forces.
Thales says that the new site is bringing 500 highly skilled jobs to the area – including 300 specialised engineers – with capacity to take a further 100 jobs as the firm grows in the region. The company’s employing 6,500 people with annual revenues of £1.3bn.
The new site is one of the company’s five global centres designed to focus on research and technology – spending around £70m annually in the UK on research and technology. It will serve as Thales in the UK’s centre of excellence for secure radio communications, network and infrastructure systems and cyber-security consultancy.
Victor Chavez said: “The move to Green Park represents a strategic step forward for Thales, bringing together some of our key businesses with our Research team to ensure we remain on the cutting edge of customer-focused, technology and business model innovation. This new world-class workspace sets the benchmark for future working environments across Thales in the UK; designed to enable collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers as well as supporting our move to Smart Working.”
