Paramount Group president: “The joint production of "Mbombe" fighting vehicle with Azerbaijan would be a great project"

South Africa’s Paramount Group, international partner of Azerbaijan for production of mine-protected fighting vehicles, displayed its new technologies in IDEX 2011 International Defense Exhibition in Abu Dhabi, UAE on February 20-24. The company presented Mbombe fighting vehicle, one of its latest technologies to the Azerbaijani delegation at the exhibition. APA interviewed with Paramount Group’s president Ivor Ichikowitz, who spoke about his company and cooperation with Azerbaijan.


Paramount Group is the first South African company making investment in the post-soviet defense industry. What details can you give about your company?

Paramount Group has been working very closely with the Ministry of Defense Industry of Azerbaijan for a number of years. We are very proud of our relationship with the Ministry of Defense and value this great deal. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has very forward-looking vision around the creation of the defense industry in the country. We support this vision and believe that Azerbaijan can become a very important manufacturer of defense equipment for the entire CIS region. There is great potential and there are a lot of opportunities to build big and important industry that can not only help Azerbaijan to become a serious player in manufacturing of defense equipment and also to create skills and create capacity to develop other high technology industries as well.

What is Paramount Group’s place in the world’s competitive defense industry market?

Today, Paramount is becoming very important defense company in South Africa and we are growing extensively in the world as one of the most serious designers and developers of landmine protected vehicles, as well as in other areas of defense industry. The defense industry worldwide is very competitive and there are many countries, many governments are investing a lot of money in funding researching development in the industry, Paramount is a world leader in development of mine-protected vehicle manufacturing becquse we are constantly continue the development of new technology on our own.

What is the difference between the Paramount-made vehicles and their analogues?

Most of other vehicles produced around the world are based on the technology developed thirty years ago. Many companies have modified and updated those old designs to produce vehicles for the world market today. In these thirty years, many things changed not only in terms of philosophy behind how to protect large bombs and use new materials in production of vehicles. Therefore the companies are searching for new ways of producing the vehicles. Paramount has started to produce these vehicles five years ago. We started from the blank, applying new modern principles to design our vehicles. We took in consideration the latest computer-era modern design and technology, the most manufacturing techniques and most importantly the reality of current military threats, the threat experienced today in Iraq and Afghanistan more difficult than the experience of twenty years ago. What we produce today and technology, we are sharing with Azerbaijan, represent the latest technology in the world.

Many governments do not believe that Azerbaijan will get this new technology and became surprised with Paramount's partnership with Azerbaijan. There were other companies which showed interest to cooperation with us following Azerbaijan. We told them that our primary partner in CIS is Azerbaijan and those, who want to buy these technologies, need to talk with the Ministry of Defense. Needless to say, we are proud of this interest towards us. This achievement is a result of forward-looking policy of your president. It gave an opportunity to start the defense industry from scratch.

What are Paramount Group's see global plans?

Paramount Group is a rapidly growing organization and our production capacity is growing year by year and 50% of all, we invest into new technology. We consider Azerbaijan as a global strategic partner. We think these relations will grow stronger as Paramount Group grows. In any new relationship there is learning period and we saw that working in Azerbaijan is very different working with other countries and we are lucky. We also researched our opportunities to develop cooperation in other areas like aviation, environment and etc.

Please give details about your latest technology – Mbombe fighting vehicle. What conditions is this vehicle considered for? What are your plans related to Mbombe?

This vehicle for the first time was demonstrated at the exhibition in Cape Town last September and it caused a lot of interest. Mbombe can adapt to any conditions and can be used in border security, as command point, fighting vehicle and ambulance. We hope this technology will be one of the main vehicles used by defense industries. We presented this technology to the ministers of defense and defense industry, as well as to the chief of border service of Azerbaijan during the exhibition at IDEX. Azerbaijan is very interested in this technology.

Is the joint production of Mbombe with Azerbaijan possible as the production of Matador and Marauder?

I consider that it would be great project. Mbombe creates an opportunity to replace the armored personnel carrier with more modern and superior fighting vehicles. It is completely different vehicle than Matador and Marauder. It has different design and features. I think it will be useful for Azerbaijan.

How many transport means has you produced with Azerbaijan so far? Do you consider increase the number of these vehicles?

The process of production is going according to the schedule. We are negotiating now the increase of orders with the Defense Industry and other organizations. I hope we will receive new orders and continue with the production.

Paramount Group covers the aviation, space and maritime fields. What other areas do you planning to work with Azerbaijan?

I think we will develop cooperation in aviation field in the future and there are large prospects of cooperation in maritime field as well. But we don’t negotiate on this subject yet. We are happy to work together with the Ministry of Defense and see great potential for that. We are proud of support given to Azerbaijan as the country which is establishing its defense industry. Of course, we couldn’t avoid some mistakes in the learning period, but we are hopefully looking forward for our future plans and thinking on the details of long-time cooperation. We try to support Azerbaijan in achieving its goals to develop the armed forces.

Our technologies protect the people from mine and bomb explosions. The military servicemen are working in very difficult conditions and their security is very important. Azerbaijani President attaches much attention to this field and it shows that he gives great importance to the security of armed forces, unlike some other governments.


/APA/