Paris, France, May 22^nd, 2007 – ESI Group (ESIN FR0004110310), a world leader in virtual prototyping simulation, today announced that Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, a major Chinese aircraft manufacturer and partner for global aviation industry, and ESI Group forge a strategic collaboration for aeronautic composites manufacturing engineering.

Chengdu Aircraft has recently completed its implementation of ESI Group’s composites simulation solution in their aircraft design and manufacturing engineering process. Today the new generation composite parts in aircraft are one of the major innovations in aviation industry that dramatically makes the aircraft lighter in weight therefore improves the aircraft performance and efficiency in operation. The virtual simulation solution from ESI Group enables Chengdu Aircraft to simulate the entire process of composite parts design and manufacturing that accelerate the time-to-manufacture of reliable and performing composite parts, as built as designed.

As a global aviation partner, Chengdu Aircraft is also a supplier of major aircraft manufacturers across the world, for manufacturing of some parts of most used modern aircrafts, as well as of some composite parts of future generation airliners. Therefore such implementation of virtual simulation of composites manufacturing engineering helps Chengdu Aircraft to meet their customer requirements of challenges in 21^st century aviation industry.

“ESI Group’s virtual simulation solution for composite parts manufacturing engineering is really revolutionary.”, says Mr. Yougi Wen, the Chief Manufacturing engineer, Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corp, “it changes entire thinking and process of composite design and manufacturing at Chengdu Aircraft and enables us to know well in advance as early as in the preliminary design phase what kind of defects which might occur in the composite parts due to the different methods or processes in manufacturing, against the design requirement of aircraft performance.”

“We are very pleased with their progress at Chengdu Aircraft regarding the use of ESI Group’s virtual simulation for composite parts with the full participation of their newly founded manufacturing engineering division.”, says, Dr. Patrick de Luca, the product manager of ESI Group for composite solutions. “Chengdu Aircraft and ESI ATE engineers, a subsidiary of ESI Group in China, have been joining their force in working together more than 6 months to implement the methods and adapt the technologies to meet various challenges and requirements in innovation of composite parts, with full satisfaction from the customer side.”

About Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group

Chengdu Aircraft Industry (Group) Co. Ltd of China Aviation Industry Corporation was founded in 1958 and is a leading developer of civilian and military aircrafts and other industrial products in the Chinese aerospace industry.

About ESI Group

ESI Group is a world-leading supplier, and a pioneer of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and evaluate the environment’s impact on product performance. ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative and open virtual engineering solution known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous and collaborative manner. This integrated protocol allows all the company’s solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors. By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantage by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company generated sales of €66m in 2006, employs over 600 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

ESI Group - Press Relations 

Nathalie David-Franc                              

Phone: + 33 (0)1 41 73 58 35

E-mail : nathalie.david-franc@esi-group.com