In December, we looked back over the past year of accomplishments by all our people. 

At what is traditionally a time of giving, we reflect on the charitable activities of our friends and colleagues who didn’t let restrictions stop them raising money for many fantastic causes throughout the year. Our helicopters trainees presented a cheque worth over £31,000 to the Yeovil Hospital Charity – a sum raised over the past two years through events such as the 2-4-9 challenge in August. In Luton, colleagues donated £43,786 to the Alzheimer’s Society following their charitable activities throughout 2020 and 2021, and announced that from next year their chosen site charity will be Cancer Research UK. 

As Christmas approached, with the Omicron variant causing us to act with caution in the weeks preceding it, we decided to donate funding that had been allocated for traditional employee celebrations, to Social Bite for the second year running. Our donation will enable the charity to buy 4,000 meals for those experiencing homelessness this Christmas throughout the UK, contributing towards its ‘Festival of Kindness’ mission to provide 300,000 meals, gifts and essential items to vulnerable people over the festive season.

Meanwhile, enterprising graduates and Industrial Placement students from our Luton site looked to help colleagues achieve a greener Christmas by sharing sustainable wrapping paper with them. The team created over 200 packages of recyclable wrapping paper, and eco-friendly ribbons and bows, before handing them out to employees and spreading the message about green alternatives. The Christmas cheer was being felt in Yeovil too, when Santa swapped his sleigh for an AW159 Wildcat, as he paid a visit to Somerset primary schools local to our helicopters centre of excellence.

At our Lincoln site, we brought together local electronic warfare specialists from across the region for an inaugural conference in a bid to boost the area as an important destination for this expertise. The conference was created with the specific aim of gathering domain knowledge experts from the Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) and the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) worlds, with attendees including SMEs from across the East Midlands, as well as primes, academia and the military.

Also in December, we recognised performance and service excellence within the supply chain as we launched our inaugural Supplier Awards programme. Specific emphasis was given to enhancing our partnerships and delivering added value through areas such as resilience, sustainability and wider engagement with our SMEs.

Finally, we welcomed news that the UK and Japan plan to jointly develop a future fighter aircraft engine demonstrator, with the shared intention to explore further combat air technologies together in future. This announcement formed a crucial part of UK’s Combat Air Strategy, backed by £2 billion investment over the next four years.

We would like to thank everyone for their hard work to ensure another successful year for Leonardo, and we look forward to celebrating further achievements in 2022!