ASL GRP strengthens its commercial team

ASL GRP has appointed Jessica Paine as Marketing & Communications Manager and promoted Jensen Veal to Sales Manager as the UK protection specialist expands its international commercial activity.

Paine brings more than 15 years of experience across marketing, communications, client relations, digital campaigns, events, and commercial development. She will work with the leadership and sales teams to develop ASL GRP’s international profile and communicate its technical capabilities to customers, partners, and original equipment manufacturers.

Veal moves into sales after a year working on research and development projects within the company. His responsibilities will include developing customer relationships, identifying opportunities in new markets, and representing ASL GRP at international events and during customer delivery.

The appointments support growth across land, maritime, and aerospace protection. ASL GRP specialises in advanced ballistic and composite solutions for vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and other applications where protection has to be balanced against mass, space, structure, and operating environment.

Commercial work in armour and protection is inseparable from engineering. Customers rarely purchase a universal panel from a catalogue, since the required threat level, geometry, weight, mounting arrangement, environmental exposure, repair method, and certification evidence differ between platforms.

Early discussions must establish whether the requirement concerns projectiles, fragments, blast, spall, or a combination of threats. The answer affects materials, thickness, backing structures, joints, edge treatment, and the way loads are transferred into the host vehicle or aircraft.

Composite armour can combine ceramics, fibres, metals, adhesives, coatings, and structural backing. Manufacturing performance depends on material quality, layup, bonding, pressure, curing, machining, sealing, and inspection, with relatively small process variations capable of altering ballistic behaviour.

Testing is destructive and configuration specific. Representative panels are fired upon under controlled conditions, yet a successful flat panel does not automatically validate a curved assembly, door, hatch, joint, fastener, or edge.

Export growth increases the number of standards and customer interpretations that the engineering team must manage. Nations may specify different ammunition, test distances, velocities, shot patterns, environmental conditioning, documentation, and acceptance authorities.

Platform manufacturers also require accurate information about mass, centre of gravity, attachment loads, maintenance, removal, and repair. Those details affect mobility, range, payload, structural life, and the integration of other equipment.

Paine will be responsible for communicating that technical capability without reducing complex protection work to broad performance statements. International customers need enough information to identify a credible supplier, while controlled data and customer specific designs must remain protected.

Veal’s research and development experience should provide a direct connection between customer discussions and the practical limits of materials, qualification, production, and delivery. Commercial promises made before those constraints are understood can create redesign, delay, or expensive repeat testing.

“The biggest priority for our customers is reliability, ensuring they have complete confidence in their protection solutions to perform exactly as expected in real world environments,” Veal said.

Reliability extends beyond surviving a ballistic test. Protection has to retain its performance after vibration, moisture, temperature cycling, salt exposure, fuel or fluid contact, ultraviolet radiation, impact damage, maintenance, and years of service.

Lightweight protection continues to attract demand because mass removed from armour can be reassigned to payload, fuel, sensors, weapons, electrical systems, or range. The value therefore extends across the complete platform rather than ending at the protection package.

The integration pressures are visible in programmes such as Challenger 3, where armour, weapons, electronics, cooling, power, mobility, and vehicle structure have to remain within an agreed performance envelope.

Smaller protection suppliers work inside the same trade space, often with less schedule margin and fewer opportunities to absorb late changes. Their production systems need enough flexibility for bespoke geometry while retaining stable material and process controls.

International customers can smooth demand by reducing reliance on one national programme, allowing equipment, testing, and workforce costs to be spread across a wider orderbook. Export work also introduces licensing, transport controls, foreign exchange, local content expectations, and variable payment schedules.

Standard product families can shorten lead times, although the evidence supporting each configuration must remain clear. Modular design is useful only when customers understand where qualification applies and where further testing is required.

Production capacity will receive increasing scrutiny as defence demand grows. Customers want evidence that suppliers can obtain materials, retain skilled staff, maintain secure facilities, protect technical information, and deliver repeat batches without lowering quality.

Jonathon Diffey, Managing Director of ASL GRP, said investment in people remained as important as investment in products while international demand increased.

The two appointments expand the company’s ability to develop customer relationships and explain its technical offering. Their work will ultimately converge with engineering and manufacturing, where each requirement has to become a qualified protection system produced consistently and delivered with the documentation needed for service.