It carries out projects in collaboration with 14 Italian and 10 foreign universities and research centres, which are aimed at the continuous improvement of product and process technologies.

It also undertakes the research of solutions in order to reduce the environmental impact of aircraft engines,[6] in conformity with the objectives of consumption and emissions reduction dictated, within the European area, by the ACARE body.

In Colleferro (Rome), the Bombrini Parodi-Delfino-BPD Company, established in Genoa in 1912, started manufacturing explosives and chemical products, from which the space segment originated.

In 1971, production began on large diesel engines in Trieste, in a new factory established through a collaboration agreement with the state company IRI (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction).

Avio's experience in this field, combined with the increased availability of methane gas, enabled the development and manufacture of several electric power generation plants in Italy and abroad.

[13] The BPD industrial plants were established 50 km from Rome, along the railway line for Cassino, due to the initiative of the engineer Leopoldo Parodi – Delfino, supported by Senator Giovanni Bombrini, and the resolution of the State to provide the country with an independent production capacity in the chemical field.

[citation needed] Situated in a poor region of Roman countryside, the town of Colleferro began around the industrial site and was elevated to a municipal district in 1935 by Royal Decree.

After the Second World War, on the initiative of Francesco Serra di Cassano, son-in-law and successor to BPD's founder, mechanical production, which had been started up in the 1930s for munitions activities, was developed and expanded.

The Test Centre intensified experimentation on propellants, beginning with the launching of multi-stage sounding rockets for research in the upper atmosphere, produced at the Salto di Quirra military firing range in Sardinia, in the early 1960s.

[citation needed] In 1966, following its success with the rockets, BPD entered into a contract with ELDO (forerunner of the European Space Agency – ESA) for the development and production of the apogee boost motor of the ELDO-PAS telecommunications satellite.

The Ariane take-off motors have been completed now for over twenty years at the launch site in French Guiana, under the subsidiary companies Europropulsion and Regulus, set up in 1988.

[citation needed] In 1997, the acquisition of the controlling stake in Alfa Romeo Avio from Finmeccanica was key to a national strategic project aimed at reducing the excessive fragmentation of the Italian companies and at increasing competitiveness through more systematic synergies.

[13] Avio has thus been able to set out on the road of growing internationalisation, placing itself among the major world players in the field of the design and production of components and modules for aerospace propulsion.

Following the success of this first launch, the project has grown in importance and the launcher has made eighteen flights, putting various types of cargo into orbit, including numerous microsatellites for various private, institutional and government customers.

With the VV04 mission, Vega put the IXV (Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle), a prototype of the European reusable Space Rider, into a sub-orbital trajectory.