The story of Portugal’s defence industrial pull on the Nordics is usually told through Saab. It should be told through Embraer. Through 2025 and into May 2026, the strategic transport aircraft that has been quietly winning across NATO is the Embraer C-390 Millennium — co-produced at the OGMA facility in Évora, with a Portuguese industrial chain that runs back to 2011 and a maintenance hub in Alverca that is now the only authorised European MRO centre for the platform. Sweden has signed. Finland is negotiating. Portugal is at the centre of the Nordic airlifter map.
Sweden: four aircraft, ~€45M for the Portuguese economy
Sweden formally signed for four C-390 Millennium airlifters on 1 April 2025, after selecting the aircraft in November 2024 alongside the Netherlands and Austria under a trilateral European framework that includes an option for seven additional aircraft. The contract is the first Nordic order for the platform, and Sweden became the fifth NATO country to operate it. The Portuguese press has pegged the local industrial value of the Swedish deal at around €45 million — the share of contract value flowing back to Portugal through OGMA’s production of the central fuselage and other key structural components manufactured in Évora since 2011.
This is not symbolic content. OGMA — 65% owned by Embraer, with the remaining 35% held by the Portuguese state through Empordef — produces sponsons, elevators, wing trailing edge panels and centre fuselage components for every KC-390 built. Each Swedish airframe is therefore a Portuguese export, even before any add-on logistics, training or in-service support contracts. With 11 aircraft already cleared for Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria from the trilateral framework, plus options, the runway for OGMA Évora is firm.
Finland: ~€827M, five aircraft, a simulator
The next Nordic order is the larger one. Embraer confirmed in April 2025 that the Finnish Air Force had selected the C-390 to supplement its existing tactical transport capability, with a package covering five aircraft plus a flight simulator reportedly valued at approximately €827 million. As of February 2026, Embraer’s CEO publicly confirmed negotiations with Finland were still in active progress — alongside Poland and Türkiye — with the company signalling the deal is closer to signature than to opening.
If Finland signs, it would be the second Nordic operator and would more than double the regional fleet to nine aircraft. For Portugal’s industrial economy, the Finnish order maps onto the same OGMA Évora line: same Portuguese fuselage, same supply chain, same multiplier — only at a larger contract value. Critical Software in Coimbra, which builds avionics, embedded systems and verification software inside the Embraer ecosystem, sits on the same flow.
OGMA Alverca: the only authorised European MRO hub
Outside the production work in Évora, OGMA’s historic facility in Alverca is the sole authorised European MRO centre for the C-390 platform. The Alverca site provides scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, heavy structural inspections, engineering support, supply chain management and continuing airworthiness organisation services. As the Swedish, Dutch, Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, Lithuanian and Slovak fleets ramp through the rest of the decade — and if Finland and Poland sign — every European-based KC-390 is structurally tied to Portuguese aftermarket revenue for 30+ years of platform life.
That is a different kind of industrial position from the one Portugal occupies in most defence supply chains. It is closer to what Singapore Technologies Engineering has on the C-130, or what Lockheed Martin’s Marietta line has on the F-35: a permanent, contractually locked sustainment role that prints recurring revenue independent of new aircraft sales.
Why the Saab story now has a sister story
The corridor narrative most familiar to NorthSouth HQ readers has been Saab’s Gripen pitch, with Saab signing an MoU with AED Cluster Portugal and exploring component production with OGMA and Critical Software. That story is real, and we have covered it repeatedly. But it is hypothetical — it depends on Portugal eventually selecting Gripen over F-35. The KC-390 story is the opposite: it is already happening, the contracts are signed or near-signed, and the work is flowing.
For Nordic militaries, the strategic value is obvious. The C-390 covers a capability gap left by ageing C-130 Hercules fleets and the C-160 Transall, while offering more capacity than the smaller Casa C-295. For Portugal, the value is industrial: every Nordic order routes through OGMA Évora’s production line and, once delivered, into Alverca’s MRO bays for the life of the platform. For Madrid’s defence press, this is the quiet European story that has been overshadowed by F-35 noise.
What to watch next
Three signals will determine how this story scales. First, Finland’s signature. Embraer’s February 2026 commentary suggests a 2026 close, which would lift Portuguese industrial revenue from the platform into a new band. Second, Sweden’s option exercise. The trilateral framework includes seven follow-on aircraft, with the Swedish, Dutch and Austrian governments holding clear paths to top up their fleets. Third, the long-rumoured Norwegian and Danish interest in tactical transport refresh — both fleets need replacements within the next decade, and the political logic of using a NATO-aligned, in-region partner (Portugal) becomes more attractive each year that the C-390’s operational track record builds.
The Portuguese aerospace cluster has been waiting for its “Saab-of-Portugal” moment for two decades. It may turn out that the breakthrough was always going to be Embraer-flavoured, with Portuguese hands on the fuselage and Nordic colours on the tail.