Last month, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority awarded a spaceport licence to SaxaVord, granting it permission to perform 30 launches per year from Unst, a small island off the Northern coast of Scotland. Construction of the spaceport is, however, yet to be completed.
While SaxaVord and its management team made a victory lap towards the end of 2023, questions about the financial viability of the enterprise remained. An initial source who spoke to European Spaceflight in November revealed that SaxaVord owed over £1 million to spaceport contractors that it couldn’t pay. Now, a second source, this one vetted to be even better placed than the first, has confirmed that the spaceport’s main contractor, DITT, and many of the project’s subcontractors left the site in July with their equipment and machinery because of the outstanding balance.
Despite this, in August, SaxaVord representatives told The Shetland Times that the contractors had been given time off because the project was so far ahead of schedule. This was obviously untrue. Speaking to the Shetland News on 17 December, SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang finally admitted that the company had run into funding troubles, which had delayed work on the spaceport. The reason for this new transparency became clear later.
“We have made enormous progress in plugging the funding gap, and while our clients are working on the site at the moment, we will be kickstarting some of the other construction work from the new year onwards,” explained Strang. He went on to explain that he is “100 percent confident” the crisis has been overcome. And this may, in fact, be the case.
According to filings with Companies House, the UK governmental body responsible for storing information about limited liability partnerships and limited companies, Shetland Space Centre LTD, the company behind SaxaVord, filed a statement of capital following an allotment of shares on 15 December that indicated that it had raised £2.25 million. According to our newest source, some of this funding has begun to trickle into the accounts of DITT and its subcontractors.
A partial payment was made “shortly before Christmas, but there remains a significant sum outstanding,” said the source. When asked for a ballpark figure, the source explained that approximately half of the sum was still outstanding.
Interestingly, the announcement of the approval of SaxaVord’s spaceport licence by the CAA came just two days after the 15 December filing announcing that it had raised £2.25 million in funding.
A recently published CAA document entitled Space Licensing in the UK outlines a set of seven tests that a licensee is required to pass before being awarded a spaceport licence. The seven tests are national security, international obligations, national interest, financial and technical resources, personnel qualifications, safety, and environmental impact. Under the financial and technical resources test, the document outlines that applicants must include robust forecasted earnings, sources of funding for the size and scope of the proposed activities, and mitigation for areas of financial risk.
In response to questioning from European Spaceflight regarding SaxaVord’s unpaid bills, the CAA explained that it does not “comment on reports of a company’s commercial position.”
“We are satisfied that SaxaVord has the necessary financial resources to facilitate launch, based on the information provided by them at the time of their application,” a CAA spokesperson explained. “SaxaVord are required to continue to update us on their financial position as a condition of the licence.”
While examining the 2023 financials for Shetland Space Centre would certainly allow for a deeper understanding of the company’s financial position over the last year, a look at its 2022 results would show its position going into the year. According to Companies House, the company is, however, currently overdue on its obligation to submit its 2022 financial results. The deadline for the company to submit these results was 31 December 2023. In 2022, the company submitted its financials on 20 December, in 2021 on 6 October, and in 2020 on 31 December.
SaxaVord should be an easy win for the UK. The spaceport has managed to attract a number of interested launch companies and appears to be a frontrunner in the race to develop a sustainable vertical launch facility in mainland Europe. However, the country’s government has thus far been completely inept at finding any way to meaningfully support the spaceport’s development. That has, however, not stopped officials from taking a victory lap of their own.
The granting of the spaceport’s licence was described as “an era-defining moment for the UK space sector” by the director of space regulation at the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Not exactly the model of impartiality from the man seemingly holding the rubber stamp. The Scottish innovation minister Richard Lochhead MSP described it as a milestone that “heralds a new era for space in Scotland.”
The treatment of its contractors and the untruths officials spouted to conceal its financial troubles are reprehensible. It is, however, ludicrous that a country that espouses a desire to prioritize space has so completely failed to support the development of one of its most promising space-related infrastructure projects.
