South Africa’s Denel Targets Turkey

Denel Dynamics, the missiles and unmanned aircraft systems business arm of SA defence manufacturer, Denel, is exhibiting at this year’s International Defence Industry Fair (IDEF) in Istanbul, Turkey from May 10 – 13.

However, the South African company is not treating Turkey as a market for its products, but considers the country more for a partnering opportunity on future collaboration projects. “Turkey has an advanced defence industry with ambitious national industrial development goals – similar to South Africa. It makes sense for us to strengthen relationships between the two nations and find win-win cooperation opportunities,” says  Denel Dynamics CEO, Jan Wessels. 

Both South Africa and Turkey are members of the G20 group of progressive developing nations.

“South Africa has a comparably small but highly agile missile and UAV design, production and maintenance capability, anchored around a very strong engineering ‘hub’ in Denel Dynamics,” says Wessels. Looking forward, the innovative technologies in the A-Darter and Umkhonto missiles provide the South African business with the confidence that they can add value to Turkish air defence missile programmes through partnerships. The A-Darter joint collaboration project between the governments of Brazil and South Africa is a high profile example of what can be achieved between the industries of two politically aligned, advanced developing nations. “South Africa and Turkey can do the same,” says Wessels.

Source: Times Live South Africa

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