Kongsberg NanoAvionics is a Lithuanian company which manufactures small satellites, and its currently looking for a place to expand in Vilnius since receiving a major order from the US-based space tech company SpinLaunch. The order is worth hundreds of millions of euros.
The Vilnius-based company is owned by the defence and aerospace giant Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace in Norway, and the company’s CEO, Atle Wollo, says that the order will require another 1,000 m2 in floorspace. The company is considering renting new facilities or building a new manufacturing factory.
“Apart from the building as such, the equipment that will be inside it will cost around EUR 10 million,” Wollo told the BNS news agency. “I’m talking about manufacturing equipment, automation and such. We are looking now for suitable buildings for this purpose which we can lease if we can find a good place. The alternative is to build a facility that we will own.”
Kongsberg NanoAvionics sighed a EUR 122.5 million contract with SpinLaunch a month ago, the CEO said. The Lithuanian company will be manufacturing 280 microsatellites for communications and broadband.
“We see a great future here in Vilnius,” Atle Wallo explains. “This contract is from a customer in America, but we already know that the best and cheapest solution is found right here. We’re already manufacturing satellites in Lithuania.”
Kongsberg NanoAvionics plans to hire around 100 people to deal with the new order, and another 100 are to be employed over the next five years. Wollo says the company expects to double or triple its profits during this period.
A report filed by the company with the Latvian Centre of Registers shows that revenues grew by 55% to EUR 27.8 million in 2023.
NanoAvionics announced in early April that it would be producing low orbit satellites which support broadband satellite communications. The partnership agreement covers the design of two prototypes and then the design and manufacturing of several hundred satellites as such.
NanoAvionics worked on 73 satellites in 2023, and 16 of them were launched into space –almost twice as many as the year before (9 satellites). More than 40 satellites from the company have been launched into space in total.
Source: BNS
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