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Aerospace Valley is a bi-regional competitiveness cluster dedicated to aeronautics, space and embedded systems. Officially recognised by the French national government in July 2005, AV is today one of three R&D clusters in France entirely devoted to aeronautics. The "headquarters" are located in Toulouse and the cluster covers the two geographically adjacent political regions Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine in South-West of France. Today AV has 540 members (50% of them are SMEs active in the aerospace sector) including amongst others the industrial main players Airbus, SAFRAN or Thales Avionics as well as the major aeronautical research establishments and engineering schools (ONERA, ENAC, ISAE). Overall, AV represents 1/3 of the French aerospace workforce totalling to around 94 000 industrial employments.
AV is governed by an association whose members are grouped by "colleges", i.e. categories of associate members: (i) large companies, (ii) SMEs, (iii) research centres, (iv) education and training centres, (v) local authorities (including the regions Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine), (vi) development agencies, and (vii) other stakeholders.
The main activities of AV are devoted to the elaboration and the financing of collaborative R&D projects. Further activities include structuring projects such as for example the future Aerospace Campus in Toulouse or the aircraft dismantling facilities at Tarbes-Lourdes airport. During FP7, AV has been nominated as member of the official French "transport NCP consortium" with the specific role of technical NCP dedicated to aeronautics and air transport.
France AV will mainly be responsible for work package 3, and more WP4 through, for example, establishment of contacts to the French aeronautics R&D community (both academia and industry), which is considered as one of the most important in Europe, and also support activities of the other work packages.
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