BAE’s acquisition of Ball Aerospace blasts off

WESTMINSTER — For the first time in more than a half-century, aluminum-can giant Ball Corp. (NYSE: BALL) is without an aerospace division. 

A deal to sell Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. division to British aerospace and defense company BAE Systems PLC for about $5.6 billion was completed on Friday, shifting more than 5,200 now-former Ball workers to a new employer and allowing the Westminster-headquartered parent company to focus on its core packaging business.

“Today marks a significant milestone in Ball’s 144-year history. We extend our best wishes for continued success to our former colleagues and their new BAE Systems Inc. teammates,” Ball CEO Daniel Fisher said in a prepared statement Friday. “Ball will utilize the approximately $4.5 billion of after-tax cash proceeds to reduce leverage, return value to shareholders and embark on the next step in our journey with greater financial flexibility and a focused purpose of advancing sustainability through aluminum packaging solutions that support a world free from waste. Our culture, purpose, operating model, and team are aligned with current and future shareholders’ interests by acting responsibly, delivering innovation at scale, and generating cash flow and higher (economic value added) returns to accelerate shareholder value creation now and beyond.”

Ball Aerospace will now operate as a new BAE business unit called Space & Mission Systems, led by Dave Kaufman, Ball Aerospace’s former president. 

“We are thrilled to welcome more than 5,200 employees to the BAE Systems Inc. team who pioneer discoveries that enable our customers to meet mission-critical needs across all domains,” BAE’s new Space & Mission Systems’ website said on Friday. “BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems will continue to leverage a long-standing expertise in spacecraft, instruments, ground systems, sensors, tactical systems, operations, data analytics, and other defense and civil systems to deliver an increased range of products and differentiating technologies to address customer requirements.”

According to BAE Space & Mission Systems, which has been branded with the “Together, We Go Beyond” tagline, the new division will “deliver cutting-edge space solutions, more accurate weather forecasts, and insightful observations of our planet and universe. We provide actionable data and intelligence that protects our nation.”

Because BAE is a foreign defense contractor, the regulatory approval process that took place in advance of the acquisition’s completion was robust. 

After the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency and the Committee on Foreign Investments previously signed off on the deal, the U.S. Department of Justice wrapped up its review this week.

By offloading the aerospace division, Ball can focus on its core aluminum business, company leaders said when the deal was announced last summer. 

Fisher told investors in August 2023  that “Ball, going forward, will be a pure-play aluminum packing leader,” adding that “aerospace is not a hugely cash-generative business.”

The story of Ball Aerospace goes back 53 years to 1956, when Ball Brothers Research Corp., as the company was then known, took Boulder city officials up on their push to recruit companies to a new industrial park east of town. 

Upon arriving in town, staff with Ball Corp., then based in Muncie, Indiana, learned about local scientists doing military research on space exploration at the University of Colorado in what would later be known as the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

They had discovered how to build a stable platform to attach equipment and cameras to rockets sent into the upper atmosphere. Ball’s Boulder team, led at the time by R.C. “Merc” Mercure, saw an opportunity. 

By 1959, the company had built the nation’s first orbiting solar observatory for a new government agency called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA.

Ball Aerospace had maintained a significant presence in Boulder, and in late 2020 began submitting plans to city officials to expand its campus. 

“Our business was founded in Colorado and has a long and proud history in this great state,” Kaufman, who will take questions from members of the media during an event Feb. 20 at BAE’s Broomfield facility, told BizWest in an emailed statement. “We will continue to build on that legacy as the Space & Mission Systems sector of BAE Systems.”

Beyond that statement, BAE and Ball have been mum on what impact, if any, the acquisition will have on the former Ball Aerospace’s local operations, which are centered around facilities in Boulder, Broomfield and Westminster.

on Facebook on LinkedIn