This year saw TWI sign an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) to become the ESA Technology Broker for the UK.
The agreement began in May as part of the ESA’s ScaleUp programme, which comprises of two parts:
- Technology Brokerage: Supporting and promoting activities between space and non-space entities
- Prepare for Space: A technology transfer programme that offers business and technical support to non-space companies seeking to enter the space industry
The first steps in this initiative were to create the dedicated website while our experts organised their diaries to attend events to promote our work as the ESA Technology Broker for the UK.
The ESA held two Industry Space Days on 18-19 September in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The event was organised by the ESA Directorate of Commercialisation, Industry and Competitiveness’ SME section to foster cooperation between different actors from across the space sector. There were a range of activities during the event, including an exhibition and industry booths to allow people to engage with future partners, keynote speeches and panel discussions and ESA presentations and workshops about business opportunities and future activities. TWI Ltd was represented as UK ESA Technology Brokers by Business Development Manager, Vito Di Pietro who was available for one-to-one meetings.
The Industry Space Days acted as a precursor to the official ESA Technology Broker UK Launch Event, which took place on 15 October, 2024 at TWI Cambridge. The event offered insights into the opportunities being made available for UK industry, while also providing a forum for networking with industry leaders, exploring collaboration opportunities, and discovering how the ESA Technology Broker helps to navigate the space industry landscape.
October also saw the first open call for the ‘Prepare for Space’ initiative, inviting interested parties to apply for the support on offer to help them enter the space industry. In addition, we began to hold bid-writing workshops in different cities across the UK.
More information was provided in November through two more events, ‘ESA 101,’ which provided background information about the ESA, while we also attended Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen, Germany, where were able to showcase some engineering innovations for the space industry.
As well as these more formal events, we attended hundreds of meetings throughout the year with companies from both space and non-space sectors, including with collaborators like space clusters, RTOs, industry associations and government agencies. These meetings allowed us to share information about the technology brokerage and Prepare for Space initiative while engaging with key bodies and stakeholders.
In addition, we worked to provide information via the website, including an article dedicated to technology transfer and the space sector. This article demonstrated how the space industry is one of the fastest-growing, dynamic and innovative sectors of the UK economy. The article offered details of UK space sector growth, unmet needs within the sector – including spin-in and spin-out, capital and solutions for industry through technology transfer, and the support available through the Prepare for Space initiative.
Of course, all of these activities are aimed at encouraging collaboration between the space and non-space industries, and so we are pleased to announce that a number of submissions have been received for a range of potential technologies that could find use in the space industry. You can see more about these on our Technologies page.
We have more activities, events and calls planned for 2025, so make sure to stay connected via the website and our LinkedIn channel to keep abreast of goings-on for 2025.