Airbus Defence and Space has signed a partnership agreement with TerraNIS, a geo-information services company working in the fields of agriculture, environment and land management, and ARTAL Technologies, a company specialising in software development. This agreement aims to boost the use of services based on satellite imagery by private and public players, both in France and internationally.

The new partnership will further intensify the deployment of geo-information services through robust processing channels and an expanded customer portfolio, ranging from SMEs and local authorities to national institutional entities.

All of these services will benefit from the advantages offered by the fleet of satellites operated by Airbus Defence and Space, which is the market's most extensive in terms of resolution, reactivity and availability: radar satellites with TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X and soon PAZ, optical satellites with SPOT 6 and SPOT 7, DMC-2, DEIMOS-1, plus the constellation of very high-resolution Pleiades 1A and 1B satellites.

Bernhard Brenner, Head of Geo-Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space, said: "We are very happy with this collaboration, which will enable a large number of private and public players to access the best of our space technology, thanks to tailor-made services developed to precisely address their needs." For more than 30 years, the company has been providing geo-information services using satellite imagery, across a broad market spectrum comprising mapping and land management, the environment and agriculture, oil and gas exploration and defence and security.

Marc Tondriaux, CEO of TerraNIS, said: "Thanks to the 'Eugenius' (European Group of Enterprises for a Network of Information Using Space) initiative that we have just launched and are coordinating, we will be setting up a network of European SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) that, each in their own region, will be providing these cutting-edge services, using the same technical platform and sharing a common catalogue of products and services."

TerraNIS specialises in the development and marketing of geo-information services in the fields of agriculture, environment and land management, and also provides consulting, support and expertise for users of Earth observation-based technologies.

For several years now, TerraNIS has been offering worldwide operation and distribution of the Pixagri and oenoview precision agriculture and wine-growing services developed by Airbus Defence and Space, in partnership with ICV (Institut Cooperatif du Vin) for wine-growers.

ARTAL Technologies is an IT consulting and services company that has real expertise in the architecture of software infrastructures for industrial fields such as aeronautics, space and defence.

"Thanks to this technical expertise, we provide industrialisation and lifetime maintenance for the production tools developed by Airbus Defence and Space and TerraNIS for the benefit of their customers," said Pierre Duverneuil, CEO of ARTAL Technologies. The activities of ARTAL Technologies involve around one hundred staff, with offices in France and Canada.