Scotland National Strategy for Economic Transformation: industry leadership groups and sector groups - evidence

17. Space Industry Leadership Group

Industry Aspirations to 2030

The industry aims to increase GVA to £4 billion, up from £880 million in 2017/8 and to increase employment to 18,000, up from 8,000 in 2017/8 and 6,933 in 2014/5.

Industry Opportunities

The space sector has identified the following positive areas of opportunity:

• the global space market is seeing an increased reliance and utilisation of space-based applications and services, resulting in significant growth. Scotland has a unique position in the sector with the offering of the entire space value chain from launch, through satellite design and production, satellite operations and data services;
• with focus on inward investment, infrastructure, skills, finance and innovation, the growth rate can be increased to keep in line with global trends; and,
• the industry’s natural cluster—including satellite design and production in Glasgow, space data productisation in Edinburgh, launch in the North and West of Scotland—mostly align with geographic and academic strengths in those regions.

Industry Challenges

Despite the Scottish space sector having done extremely well at utilising Scottish Enterprise support in R&D and job creation, it lacks the infrastructure that is critical to attracting new business to Scotland and facilitating growth of our successful start-ups. It is also important that Scotland recognises the strong position it has in ’new space’ and invests to grow the sector at a pace in line with the global market, focussing on key areas such as inward investment, infrastructure, skills, finance and innovation.

Ongoing and Planned Activity for Industry

The following activity is ongoing throughout the sector:

• the Scottish Space Leadership Council (SSLC) New Voices working group is addressing diversity in the space workforce as well as encouraging young people to pursue careers in the sector;
• a Sustainabilty Working Group is aimed at addressing the environmental impact of space and a drive towards net zero in the sector; and to also drive technologies and practises to make Scotland a leader in the sector; and,
• the SSLC is currently finalising the Scottish Space Strategy. In addition, the SSLC has a number of working groups looking at key drivers and enablers for the sector. Future working groups will include work to address infrastructure needs to accelerate sector growth.