Airbus and Safran to buy Tikehau out of strategic supplier Aubert & Duval

Airbus and Safran have signed a binding agreement to buy out Tikehau Capital’s stake in Aubert & Duval, leaving the two aerospace groups as the sole and equal owners of one of France’s most strategically sensitive metals producers.

The three parties announced the agreement on June 25, 2026. Tikehau Capital’s Aerospace and Defense fund is selling its holding to its existing co-shareholders, with Airbus and Safran splitting the stake equally so that each ends up owning half of the company.

The transaction remains subject to the required regulatory approvals. The companies said the deal would not change Aubert & Duval’s organization or day-to-day operations, with the firm continuing to work independently with its customers and suppliers.

One of the few suppliers of its kind

Aubert & Duval sits at a narrow and hard-to-replace point in the aerospace and defense supply chain. The company designs, produces, and transforms complex metallic materials, including special steels, superalloys, titanium, and aluminum, for critical sectors such as aerospace, defense, energy, including nuclear, and medical, covering the full value chain from material design through to forged blank parts.

In aerospace, its superalloys and special steels are the type of materials used in turbine discs, engine hot sections, and landing gear, while its titanium expertise feeds a market that has spent recent years trying to cut its dependence on Russian aerospace-grade titanium.

Standing up a new qualified source is slow: industry specialists note that producing material certified for aerospace-grade applications can take up to 10 years or more, part of why control of a producer like Aubert & Duval carries weight well beyond its revenue.

The French state underlined that sensitivity when the consortium first bought the company, retaining a golden share in order to protect its strategic interests. At the time, Safran’s Chief Executive, Olivier Andriès framed the purchase as a way to ensure the national and European sovereignty of strategic programs developing civil and military engines, and to secure the critical parts and materials supply chain.

Aubert & Duval also recycles titanium, an activity the companies tie to both securing critical-material supplies and decarbonizing industry.

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A turnaround since 2023

The buyout caps a recovery phase that began when Airbus, Safran, and Tikehau Capital acquired Aubert & Duval from mining group Eramet on April 28, 2023. At that point, the company generated annual revenue of around €550 million and employed 3,700 people, mostly in France. It has since grown to roughly €960 million in revenue and close to 4,400 employees across ten industrial sites, eight of them in France, according to the companies, which said they had led a major phase of transformation and recovery alongside management and staff.

With Tikehau Capital exiting, Airbus and Safran take on full ownership of a supplier both groups rely on, the latest in a series of initiatives to strengthen France’s aerospace sector. The companies did not disclose the value of the transaction, which still requires regulatory clearance.

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