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The Story of Zodiac Aerospace
Zodiac is the world’s oldest aerospace manufacturer still in business today. It can trace its roots back to a unique entrepreneurial adventure that took place in France at the turn of the 20th century.
The beginning of aeronautics
Born in 1861, Maurice Mallet eagerly followed the development of aeronautics. When he visited the Universal Expo in 1878, he was fascinated by the huge “steam powered” tethered balloon that the engineer Henry Giffard had built and set up in the Tuileries courtyard. In 1884, he befriended Paul Jovis, a somewhat whimsical airman, with whom Maurice Mallet created a company for aerostatic experiments that offered balloon trips. While the company also began building aerostats, Mallet managed the construction of Le Horla, a "luxury" 422 gal US spherical balloon named after a short story recently published by Guy de Maupassant.
After Paul Jovis’s death in 1891, Maurice Mallet bought his workshops on rue des Cloÿs in Paris, where he employed a team of skilful and skilled workers, including a group of young women who were responsible for the meticulous work of sewing and assembling the canopies.
Together with his former pupil Antonino Mélandri, an accomplished sportsman and competent airship pilot, and the industrialist Paul Simard de Pitray, grandson of the Countess de Ségur, Maurice Mallet founded his first company on December 21, 1896, using their three names: Mallet, Mélandri et de Pitray. Its aim was to create and operate an aerostatic fleet, which obtained permission to be installed on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne.
In 1898, Maurice Mallet met Henry de La Vaulx, who made his first ascent in a balloon from the Mallet workshops. Captivated, he decided to devote his time and fortune to the development of aeronautics. Like many aristocrats and patrons of the time, in October of the same year, de La Vaulx took part in the creation of the Aéro-Club de France, which played a key role in the organisation of competitions for free balloons and the creation of a records verification and monitoring committee in 1899. Maurice Mallet became the official supplier to this new aeronautical society. The aerostats that came out of his workshops were renowned for the care and refinement of their construction, but also for the many innovations they featured.
Renamed Ateliers aéronautiques Maurice Mallet in 1899, the rue des Cloÿs workshops were transferred to Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine) in 1903.
In January 1908, de La Vaulx and Mallet decided to join forces to create the Société française des ballons dirigeables (French Dirigible Balloons Society). Officially incorporated on March 12, 1908, its main purpose was "designing, building, selling, acquiring, and renting all kinds of dirigible balloons, as sole or joint operators". The Maurice-Mallet workshops became their exclusive suppliers. From being bespoke makers and craftsmen, they had to evolve into semi-industrial facilities in order to enter the economic circuit.
The company changed its name in June 1909 to Société française de Ballons dirigeables et d'Aviation Zodiac (French society of dirigible balloons and aviation Zodiac), then following the absorption of Ateliers Mallet in 1911, the company became Société Zodiac - anciens établissements aéronautiques Maurice Mallet (Zodiac – former Maurice Mallet aeronautical establishments).
At the same time, Maurice Mallet was experimenting with the construction of heavier-than-air aircraft. The production of Zodiac first monoplanes led to the expansion of the Puteaux factory in 1911 to create a workshop dedicated exclusively to the manufacture of aeroplanes.
In the early 1910s, as part of its ambitious airship programme, the Ministry of War called on Zodiac to build several heavyweight airships. The constraints and difficulties caused by these contracts with the French government led to the departure of Count de La Vaulx.
Although the First World War did not have a major financial impact on Zodiac, the company remained relatively fragile, with its core business of aerostation in decline in the 1920s. On September 27, 1926, a new chapter began with the death of the company's founder and chairman, Maurice Mallet. Emile Brocard succeeded him as Chairman of the Board.
In these circumstances, and in the face of competition from Aérazur, a company founded in 1928, Zodiac launched a particularly active innovation policy: coatings to make fabrics waterproof, fabric gas tanks, a high-power winch using a 100-horsepower Hispano engine, parachutes, etc.
In the early 1930s, two rounds of investment raised the company's capital to 4.5 million francs, to ensure it had sufficient working capital to fulfil its customer orders. At the same time, the French Air Ministry asked Zodiac to design and manufacture moto-balloons: a motorised gondola attached to the balloon enabled it to move along the ground under its own power. Despite the success of this new product, the company's activities slowed down from October 1940, especially as the German authorities took over the factories and seized the moto-balloons in working order.
Zodiac was the oldest of the five major French aeronautical brands not to disappear at the Liberation. However, its financial situation remained precarious. In November 1953, the Board of Directors officially declared that "all dedicated aeronautical activity would cease".
Marine activities
The invention by Pierre Debroutelle, one of the company's longest-serving employees, of a model of inflatable boat in the late 1930s proved to be a lifesaver for Zodiac, which became synonymous with reliability in the nautical field, and the brand gradually became the generic name for an inflatable boat.
Shortages of raw materials and inflation made it difficult to meet the first orders for boats placed by the Ministry of Air and the French Navy in the late 1940s. Resuming its traditional policy of innovation, Zodiac allowed Pierre Debroutelle to design new prototypes despite the strain this research was putting on the company's finances. The first models were marketed to the general public in 1949.
In this context, the Desanges family, long-standing shareholders of the company, offered to make a substantial financial contribution on condition that the Board of Directors was renewed. Significant changes in the way the company operated marked the presidency of Richard Desanges. In 1951, most of the company's production was transferred to Rochefort (Charente-Maritime), leaving only the design office headed by Alfred Gaillard, a repair department and a unit production workshop at the original Puteaux plant.
Zodiac also endeavoured to forge partnerships with other companies in order to design innovative products that could open up new markets. Between 1951 and 1953, Zodiac developed life-vests composed of a canvas body filled with a very light material manufactured by the Kléber factory in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), inflatable casings in collaboration with Airform Constructions, and springs and frameworks for mattresses and flexible seats as part of a contract with the Swiss company Spühl.
Zodiac's sales of inflatable boats really took off in the early 1950s. Its lead over the competition was undeniable, as its boats were the only ones that could be fitted with engines under satisfactory performance conditions. In addition, Zodiac acquired an exclusive patent from Robindus for the percussion head used on the brand’s gas bottles, providing a practical, automatic inflation system for all inflatable equipment.
At the end of the year 1952, Alain Bombard made a solo crossing of the Atlantic in a production model of a Zodiac inflatable boat called L'Hérétique. Bombard was instrumental in promoting inflatables, which until then had been criticised for the belief that their unconventional construction made them flimsy at sea.
On January 14 and May 3, 1955, two decrees were enacted authorising the "replacement of regulation floating vessels and life rafts" with "self-inflating inflatable rafts", as long as the latter met the criteria defined by the Ministry of the Merchant Navy. In particular, these required the use of materials that could "withstand the rigors of the sea, heat, cold, accidental contact with fuel, and have been proved to be usable for a period of five years or have undergone laboratory tests deemed equivalent". Zodiac is undoubtedly one step ahead of its main competitors.
A major development plan for the Paris area launched by the French government in the early 1950s led to the expropriation of the Zodiac factories in Puteaux. In March 1956, all production activities and the head office were relocated on the Rochefort site. At the same time, the company acquired a three-storey building in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine) to house its administrative and accounting departments, and from May 1959 its head office.
Despite a lack of advertising, Zodiac was struggling to meet orders from an emerging civilian customer base. Lightweight, easy to assemble and, above all, easy to transport, inflatable boats were winning over a growing number of private customers, who appreciated the versatility of these craft, which could be used for a wide variety of activities. To meet this new challenge, Zodiac had to change not only its operating methods, but also the appearance of its boats to bring them more into line with the requirements of civilian customers. This was the start of a review of advertising, after-sales service and, more generally, the company's commercial organisation.
At the end of the 1950s, the first synthetic fabrics of nylon coated with neoprene and hypalon, synthetic elastomers, reached the market and proved to be much more resistant to ageing, natural agents and hydrocarbons. The materials inherited from balloon production techniques, which were essentially strips of cotton coated in rubber, were gradually left behind.
The death of Richard Desanges, the appointment and subsequent resignation of his brother Claude Desanges as Chairman of the company, and the death of Managing Director Maurice Ganil made 1962 a year of instability.
In 1963, the monthly production rate was two hundred boats, which proved insufficient to meet customer demand. To increase production, a temporary workshop was set up in Courbevoie, while the Rochefort plant expanded its workshops. During the same period, the company's directors recruited new employees. The company quickly became more efficient, and by the end of the year, Rochefort was producing seventeen boats a day. By the mid-1960s, Zodiac was undoubtedly the world leader in inflatable boats, selling more than 4,000 units a year.
In May 1965, for reasons of consistency, simplification and above all to avoid "causing confusion abroad", the company's name was officially changed to Zodiac, erasing once and for all any reference to the former Maurice Mallet establishments.
Back to aeronautics and internationalisation
In the early 1970s, Zodiac entered a new period of uncertainty. Jean-Louis Gerondeau, appointed Managing Director in 1974, helped steer the company towards a new phase of growth, initially by reorganising the company and reinvesting in the aeronautical sector on a long-term basis through the acquisition of its long-standing competitor Aérazur.
With the acquisition of EFA (Etudes et Fabrications Aéronautiques) in 1979, Zodiac established itself as the French leader in parachutes, and then as the sole supplier to the French Army for the renewal of its fleet of personnel parachutes for group jumps.
Various acquisitions and the creation of subsidiaries abroad transformed Zodiac into a real group. The company went international and turned to the civilian market, establishing itself as one of the main leaders in the field of evacuation slides. While it retained a major boating division that was expanded with a department catering to swimming pools and water sports, Zodiac gradually established itself as a benchmark brand in civil aviation.
Throughout the 1980s, Zodiac succeeded in broadening its scope of activity around a common technical denominator: flexible composite materials. It also consolidated its position through new acquisitions. In the 1990s, Zodiac entered the aircraft cabin market for the first time, a sector consolidated by the acquisition of world leaders SICMA Aero Seat, Weber Aircraft and Monogram Systems. The broad diversification of its activities made the Group less vulnerable than other market players to the incessant ups and downs of aeronautical cycles.
At the dawn of the new millennium, against a backdrop of strong growth in the civil aviation sector, Zodiac expanded its strategy of investing in niche markets to secure a dominant position in more sectors of the aeronautical equipment industry. The acquisition of Intertechnique, initiated in 1999, was a decisive step in this direction, enabling the company to enter the field of on-board systems and secure its place among the world's top ten aeronautical equipment manufacturers.
In 2005, Zodiac acquired the American group C&D Aerospace, a specialist in aircraft cabin interiors. Its business encompassed both the production of cabin components and the delivery of full cabins, often supplied as turnkey solutions. This new set of high-tech activities gave Zodiac a dominant position in the sector of aircraft cabin interiors.
In 2007, the company sold its Marine division to the American investment fund Carlyle. This decision enabled it to refocus definitively on its original business, aeronautics, under the new name of Zodiac Aerospace, and to establish itself as a key player in the aerospace industry.
As Zodiac celebrated its 120th anniversary in 2016, a planned merger with Safran was announced. Safran absorbed Zodiac in 2018, and the equipment manufacturer's activities were combined and renamed to create Safran Aerosystems, Safran Cabin and Safran Seats.
Entrepreneurial Tales - Zodiac Aerospace, 120 years in Aerospace (Safran Heritage Media Library DP017342)
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