New board of directors to lead Manta Aircraft

Man­ta Air­craft has appoint­ed a new board of direc­tors from for­mer Agus­ta West­land top man­agers, includ­ing Giuseppe Orsi, Fabio Nan­noni and Ser­gio Bigan­zoli, as well as Euge­nio Cre­mas­coli from Avionord.

Man­ta Air­craft has an ongo­ing com­mit­ment to enhance cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, fos­ter inno­va­tion, and dri­ve fur­ther growth. The new­ly appoint­ed board brings togeth­er a diverse group of expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als and experts who boast a track record in avi­a­tion top man­age­ment, air­craft design, mar­ket­ing, and oper­a­tions.

A pri­ma­ry focus is to secure the next financ­ing round to finalise the plat­form design, devel­op core sub­sys­tems, and pro­duce two full-scale pro­to­types.

Man­ta Air­craft CEO Lucas March­esi­ni said: “Our con­tin­u­ous growth and progress demand­ed this tar­get­ed realign­ment for impend­ing mile­stones and we wel­come these avi­a­tion heavy­weights, who bring valu­able exper­tise and know-how to our com­pa­ny.”

After grad­u­at­ing in Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Poly­tech­nic of Milan, Giuseppe Orsi start­ed his career in 1973 with SIAI Mar­che­t­ti. After the firm was incor­po­rat­ed in Agus­ta, he was appoint­ed to hold a series of key man­age­ment posi­tions of home and inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tions, includ­ing the joint ven­ture with Bell Heli­copters for the BA (then AW) 609 Tilt-rotor pro­gram.

Fabio Nan­noni received his Mas­ters degree in Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing from Politec­ni­co di Tori­no in 1982. Dur­ing his career he devel­oped more than 50 pro­pri­etary codes in the field of heli­copter flight sci­ence and analy­sis, which are still active­ly used in the company’s design process.

Ser­gio Bigan­zoli served as CFO of AgustaWest­land for near­ly eight years, a role at one of the world’s most sig­nif­i­cant heli­copter com­pa­nies, and brings addi­tion­al expe­ri­ence in finan­cial man­age­ment and con­sul­tan­cy, includ­ing with­in the aero­space indus­try.

Euge­nio Cre­mas­coli has suc­cess­ful­ly led sev­er­al enter­pris­es in the health and med­ical sec­tors, from incor­po­ra­tion till matu­ri­ty. NGC Med­ical Spa was acquired by Medtron­ic Inc. He cur­rent­ly owns and man­ages Colum­bus Clin­ic in Milan.

Since 2008 he also leads the steady growth of Avionord, based in Milan Linate air­port, oper­at­ing 7 busi­ness jets. Avionord med­ical divi­sion is the main nation­al play­er in the trans­porta­tion of trans­plan­ta­tion organs.

With a Master’s degree in Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing from Politec­ni­co di Milano and an MBA from SDA Boc­coni, Lucas March­esi­ni has been involved in avi­a­tion, both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and as a com­pet­i­tive glid­er pilot and light air­craft pilot.

With over 30 years of expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ing engi­neer­ing and design ser­vices for renowned auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­ers and motor­sport col­lab­o­ra­tions, Juan­jo Espinosa brings a wealth of expe­ri­ence in trans­port vehi­cles design and devel­op­ment.

Man­ta Air­craft start­ed devel­op­ing its fam­i­ly of hybrid-elec­tri­cal ver­ti­cal and short take-off and land­ing (HeV/STOL) air­craft in 2021 with a 1:3 scale demon­stra­tor used to test basic fly­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics.