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EEDA makes £12m pledge to new satellite

Written by Business Weekly

Wednesday, 11 April 2007

The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) has promised to provide £12 million towards a major European space satellite that would maintain over 120 jobs in the region, ensure a continued presence in the European space programme and help protect the UK’s long term interests in the project. The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) has promised to provide £12 million towards a major European space satellite that would maintain over 120 jobs in the region, ensure a continued presence in the European space programme and help protect the UK’s long term interests in the project. The investment is to be matched over three years by fellow regional development agencies (RDAs), the London Development Agency (LDA) and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and will form part of a bid to put a new communications satellite, known as Alphasat, into orbit in 2011. The competitive pitch is being made by a partnership of Inmarsat, a London-based provider of global mobile satellite communications, and the Stevenage-based world leading designer and manufacturer of satellite systems, Astrium. EEDA believes that if the bid – which is being run by the European Space Agency (ESA) – is successful, it will bring huge economic benefits to the local area and the Greater South East region. Both ESA and Inmarsat would contribute significant funds to the programme – likely to be in the region of £290m. The Inmarsat XL satellite would be designed at Astrium’s Hertfordshire site and would keep 127 highly skilled jobs in the region for the three years of the programme. According to EEDA, it is also possible that a winning bid would lead to further satellites being developed by Astrium. The RDA investment is also intended to support and retain Astrium’s R & D centre in Stevenage and ensure the UK’s continued world leadership in satellite communications payload technology, as well as provide Astrium with a greater competitive edge to source more work from Inmarsat and others. EEDA said that once the Inmarsat satellite is operational, it will help the UK secure further design and manufacturing projects in satellite communications, through which it is estimated that revenues of up to £250m will be generated for the Greater South East region.

 

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