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By Justin Sayers – Senior Staff Writer, Austin Business Journal
Apr 13, 2026
Austin-based aerospace and defense manufacturer Acutronic USA Inc. plans to break ground on its factory in Bastrop — said to be the first jet engine manufacturing facility in the state — by the end of this year.
That disclosure comes on the heels of an April 13 announcement from Switzerland-based Acutronic Group AG, its parent company, that Nebraska-based private equity firm InterAlpen Partners LLC and New York-based Hale Capital Partners have invested $25 million in the company to help accelerate its growth. It's the first outside investment in the company's history. Acutronic has tripled, in terms of every growth metric over the last decade, and has until this point been self-funded with tens of millions of dollars, executives said.
The new capital will be used on product development, for working capital and to finance an increase in production capacity, officials said. That includes the Bastrop facility in the city's industrial park, and officials said they aim to complete civil infrastructure work and go vertical by the end of this year.
Acutronic USA was founded more than 50 years ago and is headquartered in Pittsburgh. It's known for its motion simulators that are used to test aircraft components and missiles. The company primarily works in aerospace and defense, selling to major defense contractors and governments. But it also operates in transportation and consumer electronics. It has other locations in Switzerland, Germany, France and India.
"We're now rapidly reaching the point where both the size and the number of investment opportunities are significant enough that it was important for us to secure additional strategic capital partners in order to tackle continued growth," Acutronic Group CEO Florian Aigrain said. "So we made this decision to partner with InterAlpen and Hale Capital Partners to finance next generation, cutting edge technology, to build new factories and perhaps to do additional acquisitions."
In 2024, Acutronic moved into a 20,000-square-foot building at 3401 Ed Bluestein Blvd. that serves as headquarters for its aerospace components division. About 60 people work there. Its site in Bastrop measures 14 acres, and the manufacturing facility will start off at 20,000 square feet.
Acutronic has not yet selected a general contractor for the project. The architect is Austin-based Dick Clark + Associates.
Executives are nearing the summer launch of the second cohort of its Acutronic Apprenticeship Alliance with the Bastrop Independent School District to help build its talent pipeline.
Aigrain, without providing specific numbers, said Acutronic achieved significant growth last year, which marked the fourth consecutive year of record revenue, bookings and profitably. The company claims almost all aerospace and defense primes in the U.S., Europe and allied nations as its customers. Acutronic has more or less tripled in terms of revenue, headcount and profitability over the last decade.
"We're very, very proud of those very, very deep longstanding customer relationships," Aigrain said. "Those relationships continue. We're receiving additional purchase orders every week, every month because of what's happening in the world from a macroeconomic and geopolitical standpoint."
The Austin division on its own has seen "incredible success," he said. It represents one of the only facilities in the United States that mass-produces small jet engines. The company already sells to most defense primes, either jet engines or power systems or actuators, which he called "unprecedented" as the division remains less than a decade old.
"To have all of the defense primes is a very strong statement of our success," he said, adding that Europe and partner countries in Asia represent a critical future growth vector for Acutronic.
Stephen George, founding partner of InterAlpen, which invests primarily in mission-critical industries, called the shift in how nations are fighting and deterring adversaries a "generational transformation." He said "Acutronic sits at the absolute center of it" by providing propulsion, simulation infrastructure and autonomous systems hardware.
Martin M. Hale Jr., CEO of Hale Capital, which has more than two decades of defense technology experience, said the company recognizes "exceptional defense technology assets when we see them."
"Acutronic has built exactly the kind of trusted, proven, mission-critical platform that the defense industrial base needs more of: reliable, transatlantic, and purpose-built for the era of autonomous and attritable systems," he said in a statement.
Aigrain said the biggest challenge remains workforce. That's because the company still prioritizes human-centric manufacturing, while other companies are trending more toward automation. That prompted him to deem the apprenticeship program "one of the most successful" investments in their company's history, calling the first cohort "way better than our ambitious expectations."
"Of course, everything we do has AI and robotics involved, but we believe very, very strongly in human centric manufacturing," he said. "So these are real jobs for real Americans producing very real products that support national security."
