Daher

Daher is a family-controlled French group that has been trading for more than 160 years and now runs four businesses at once: it builds its own aircraft, makes aerostructures and tactical equipment, sells industrial services, and moves freight for other manufacturers. That combination is unusual and it is the point. Revenue is around 1.9 billion euros, roughly 14,500 people work for the group across seventeen countries, and three technology centres feed the whole thing. Defence has been part of the mix for more than thirty years.

The aircraft business sells single-engine turboprops. The TBM family, whose 1,300th airplane has been delivered, is the fast pressurised end, now led by the TBM 980. The Kodiak line, acquired with Quest Aircraft, is the rough-field utility end, and the 400th Kodiak was handed over in 2026. Daher supports both fleets and still looks after legacy TB and Rallye light aircraft. Militaries buy these airframes for surveillance, light transport, medical evacuation and operations from short or unpaved strips. That platform knowledge produced EyePulse, a sovereign medium altitude long endurance drone demonstrator built with Thales on a certified airframe, flown for the first time in November 2025 less than six months after the programme started, with roughly five tonnes of maximum weight and up to twenty hours of endurance.

The industry arm covers aerostructures and tactical containers and shelters. Aerostructures spans wing panels, winglets, fuselage sections, landing gear doors, flaps and radomes, more than 300,000 parts a year from seven plants in Europe, North America and North Africa, in metallic alloys, thermoset composites and thermoplastics, where the group has staked out a leading position. On the Rafale it makes composite canards, the vertical tail plane, equipped panels and a forward fuselage section assembled from roughly 800 elementary parts, work transferred from Dassault Aviation as production rates rose. The tactical side turns out more than 200 container and shelter designs, around 18,000 units a year, for aircraft equipment, weapon systems, communications gear and sensitive materials, plus mobile shelters for radars with ballistic and electromagnetic protection. Industrial services sell maintenance, technical expertise and training through the Daher Learning Center. Logistics is the fourth leg, covering in-situ and ex-situ industrial logistics, supply chain engineering, kitting, customs, urgent aircraft-on-ground deliveries and project transport, with Airbus Defence and Space and Dassault Aviation among the named customers. The group describes itself in four words, aircraft manufacturer, industrial company, industrial services provider and logistics operator, and it reports on all four together rather than carving defence out as a separate division. Michel Denis was appointed chief executive to run that mix. Recent moves include an expanded aircraft support and logistics facility in western France, a wider logistics partnership with Safran, and the Login by Daher programme that pushes intralogistics automation from pilot into full deployment. Decarbonisation research and an eco-aircraft workstream sit alongside the defence work in the same technology centres.