Orbex, the ould-be British rocket builder, has appointed FRP Advisory as Administrators with instructions to explore options for the business, including a potential sale, the advisory firm said in a statement. Earlier attempts to raise new funding or secure a buyer failed. Orbex ceased trading on February 18th.

Orbex, once valued at about $220 million (€186.4m)after a 2022 fundraising, ceased trading before appointing administrators, a move that impacts jobs of about 163 people it employed in the UK.

Orbex said earlier this February that the failure to secure new investment threatened hundreds of skilled jobs in Scotland and risked derailing Britain’s push to build a domestic launch sector.

“We were on the brink of something incredibly special,” said chief technology officer Andy Bradford on February 16th.

“Disappointing doesn’t come close to describing how we feel about this moment,” said CEO Phil Chambers. “We have been successfully developing a sustainable, world-class sovereign space launch capability for the UK, and were on the cusp of our first test flights later this year.

“It is no secret that designing and building space rockets to enable a launch service is a capital-intensive, highly advanced process with a long development cycle that creates a scale-up funding gap. Institutional support is crucial to bridge this gap and we have worked tirelessly to try to find both funding or rescue solutions,” he added.

Glasgow-based Skyrora said it was “ready to protect UK space capabilities” in an announcement on its website, and that it intended to explore the purchase of select assets with an investment of up to £10 million, including Sutherland Spaceport.

“Skyrora believes that securing select assets is vital to preserving UK space capability, protecting national critical infrastructure, and ensuring that technology and IP developed in the UK remains under UK ownership,” the company announcement said. “This safeguards the product of the taxpayer funds historically injected into Orbex.”

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Tags: orbex, scotland