AIAC’s BRADFORD SPACE HONORED BY AIRBUS SPACE SYSTEMS

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toulouse, France - July 30, 2026 - At the Airbus Space Systems 2026 Global Supplier Conference in Toulouse, Bradford Space, a member of the AIAC family of companies and a leading builder of spacecraft propulsion, attitude control, avionics, and thermal systems, was honored with Airbus Space Systems' prestigious "The Competitor" Award.

Bradford's Chief Performance Officer, Philippe Gnemmi, accepted the award in Toulouse on behalf of Bradford and the AIAC Group. The Airbus Space Systems Global Supplier Conference gathers key partners from across the global space supply chain to strengthen collaboration, communicate strategic priorities, and recognize the suppliers whose performance, innovation, and commitment set the standard for the sector.

"The Competitor" Award recognizes the supplier which distinguishes itself through superior technical excellence and sustained delivery performance under demanding conditions. For Bradford, the award reflects the discipline of a company that has spent four decades building hardware which must work perfectly, without maintenance, for years or decades at a time, hundreds or millions of kilometers from the nearest engineer.

Founded in 1984 in Heerle, in the Dutch province of North Brabant, Bradford has spent more than forty years building spacecraft hardware, and its products are now spread across the solar system - in low, medium, geostationary, and highly elliptical Earth orbit, and in cislunar and interplanetary space. Its reaction wheels and sun sensors, pressure transducers, flow control units and cool gas systems, thermal subsystems, and cold gas, monopropellant, water, and electric propulsion systems fly on spacecraft ranging from CubeSats to the International Space Station, on missions as short as suborbital hops and as long as fifteen-year geostationary satellite lifetimes. Today the company operates from state-of-the-art facilities in Heerle, Netherlands and Belvaux, Luxembourg.

For AIAC, the recognition carries particular meaning. Bradford exemplifies the precision, reliability, and engineering seriousness that define AIAC's manufacturing enterprises across 24 countries, and its work in spacecraft propulsion and control complements AIAC's broader activity in aviation, defense, and space, serving customers and governmental entities in every major industrial sector.

AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie stated:

"Space keeps no record of good intentions. It rewards only what works and remains working for years and decades in the harshest, most remote environments. The people at Bradford have built their company around that discipline."

"To be honored with The Competitor Award by Airbus is not a small thing. It is a judgment rendered by an great aerospace leader, and it demonstrates that the technology leaving Heerle and Belvaux stands with the best in the world. Such an honor is not earned in a season. It is earned across four decades, by engineers and technicians who build each unit as though the mission turned on that unit alone - because, in the end, it does."

"On behalf of AIAC and its companies around the globe, I congratulate Bradford CEO, Patrick Van Put, Chief Performance Officer Philippe Gnemmi and the whole of the Bradford team. I thank Airbus Space Systems for a recognition we did not seek and will not forget. And I look toward the missions still ahead of us, which will ask more of us than the ones behind."

About Airbus Space Systems

Airbus Space Systems is the space division of Airbus Defence and Space, the defence and space arm of Airbus. It designs and builds satellites and space systems for civil, commercial, and government customers worldwide, spanning telecommunications, Earth observation, navigation, and science, together with the payloads and ground segments that support them, as well as orbital and exploration systems including human-rated modules. Its programmes include Europe's Galileo navigation constellation and the Copernicus Earth observation satellites, the Columbus laboratory aboard the International Space Station, and the European Service Module, which supplies power, propulsion, thermal control, water, and air to NASA's Orion spacecraft for the Artemis missions. The division works from sites across Europe, among them Toulouse, Friedrichshafen, Stevenage, Madrid, and Bremen.

For further information, see: www.airbus.com/space

About Bradford Space

Bradford Space is a builder of spacecraft propulsion systems, attitude and orbit control equipment, avionics, thermal subsystems, and microgravity workspaces, and a member of the AIAC family of companies. Founded in 1984 in Heerle, in the Dutch province of North Brabant, the company has more than forty years of experience and operates from Heerle in the Netherlands and Belvaux in Luxembourg. The Heerle site, the larger of the two, occupies three buildings near the Belgian border and provides on-site design, engineering, production, and both electrical and mechanical test capability, together with several large cleanrooms, machining and production planning space, and in-house development for mechanics, software, and electronics. It also provides management and integration oversight for the company's propulsion systems.

Bradford's product lines include its attitude and orbit control line of reaction wheels and sun sensors; propulsion components and subsystems including pressure transducers, flow control units, and cool gas systems; thermal subsystems; and complete propulsion systems spanning cold gas, monopropellant, water, and electric propulsion, among them the Comet 1000 water thruster. The avionics line comprises the Stellar computing system, the Supernova power subsystem, and the Quasar transponder subsystem, available individually or as an integrated avionics solution. The Bradford Workspaces glovebox line, developed for research aboard the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, allowed crews to conduct scientific experiments safely under controlled containment.

Every Bradford product is built under a modern, AS9100-compliant manufacturing process, and the company's sites are AS9100 and ISO 9001 certified. Bradford serves customers ranging from early-stage NewSpace startups to the most demanding and established organisations in the sector. Bradford Space is a Partner of The Explorers Club and Sponsor of Climate Week, Oceans Week, the Explorers Club Annual Dinner, the Annual Chapters Dinner, and memorial tributes to the legendary Jane Goodall and Ted Turner.

For further information, see: www.bradford-space.com

About American Industrial Acquisition Corporation

American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing, distribution, and administrative sites in 24 countries across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia-New Zealand. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, KKR, Ahlstrom, Novellis, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.

AIAC companies serve companies and governmental entities worldwide in all major sectors, including aviation, space, defense, automotive, truck, rail, marine, petrochemical, solar, nuclear, civil engineering, logistics, agriculture, infrastructure, commercial construction, mining, dredging, disaster relief, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. AIAC companies are also exclusive, authorized distributors of leading branded industrial products, and serve as critical suppliers for the construction of major airports, schools, hospitals, performing arts and sports centers, offices, and hotels throughout Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. AIAC is a major manufacturer of greenhouse materials globally and of building, street, and highway signage in Europe, and a distributor of electrical products throughout France.

AIAC companies actively support exploration into outer space, manufacturing critical components for launching and propelling spacecraft and satellites. AIAC customers in this sector include NASA, SpaceX, the European Space Agency, Blue Origin, and Boeing. AIAC companies also lead in the design and manufacture of undersea umbilical cables for worldwide oceanographic research.

Of note, AIAC purchased Boeing Canada in 2005 and has produced over 10,000 unique components for every Boeing jet plane ever since, reliably serving Boeing from manufacturing facilities in North America. A leader in ultra-high precision jet engine component manufacturing, AIAC companies produce 2,200 fan blades for each jet engine produced by GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell.

AIAC companies produce the critical automotive wire and cable for Tesla, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan, and for the New York and Atlanta subways. In connection with its kraft paper manufacturing interests in Canada and the United States, AIAC sustainably manages 22 million acres of Manitoba, Canada forestland, an area equivalent in size to the nation of Hungary. AIAC affiliate Metallwarenfabrik Gemmingen GmbH, located in Germany, designs, manufactures, and distributes high performance, emergency portable power generators used in global conflict zones and during major natural disasters.

For further information, see: www.aiac.com

About AIAC Philanthropies

AIAC and the AIAC Foundation support a wide range of nonprofit, nonsectarian, bipartisan organizations which promote international conflict resolution, disaster relief, economic development, environmental sustainability, exploration, and the performing arts. The exploration-focused nonprofit organizations they actively support include The Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Mission Blue, the Jane Goodall Institute, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Space Society, and the United States Space Foundation.

AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie is a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, its Poet Laureate, and a Member of its Annual Dinner Committee. AIAC and its affiliates Bradford Space, Canadian Kraft Paper Industries, SuperAlloy Manufacturing Solutions, and Champlain Cable are Partners of The Explorers Club and Sponsors of Oceans Week.

For further information, see: www.aiac.com | aiac.com/our-values

About The Explorers Club

The Explorers Club is an American-based, international, multidisciplinary professional society with the mission of promoting and supporting scientific exploration and field study on land, sea, and in outer space. The club was founded in New York City in 1904 and has served as a meeting point for explorers and scientists worldwide. Members of the club have been the first to explore the North Pole, the South Pole, Mount Everest, and the Mariana Trench, and to walk on the Moon. The club's notable current members and honorees include Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, Grand Duke Guillaume V of Luxembourg, Sir Richard Branson, Ken Griffin, James Cameron, Ray Dalio, and Wendy Schmidt.

In years past, prominent members have included Sir Ernest Shackleton, President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Edmund Hillary, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Jim Lovell, Thor Heyerdahl, Walter Cronkite, Prince Philip - Duke of Edinburgh, and Jane Goodall. The Explorers Club's historic clubhouse, at 46 East 70th Street in New York City, is a museum and monument to the "Famous Firsts," the greatest explorers and expeditions of all time.

For further information, see: www.explorers.org

Media Contact

Isabel Carro-Toro, Vice President
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
+34 689 295 827 (Spain)
+1 787 244 3175 (USA)

[email protected]

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