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With a worldwide market of over 150 Billion US Dollars per year the space industry is one of the largest manufacturing markets in the world. With the UK share representing 7% of trade, there are significant opportunities for British business.

Alongside partners in London and the South East, EEDA has recently pledged £12 million to back a UK bid to the European Space Agency to put a satellite into orbit in 2011. This will secure benefits to the region’s economy through an ongoing supply chain that would otherwise be realised outside the UK.

Speaking about the event and FAC’s support of the British space industry, Ross Bradley, chief executive said: “The event was planned to highlight this huge market to our members. With increasing international competition it is essential that the UK puts space higher on the national agenda or we will be left behind. We know that the market is dominated by the USA, with both China and India investing heavily in the development of their own programmes. This is a huge potential market for UK business with space expected to grow faster than the economy of China; predicted to be worth over 1 Trillion US Dollars by 2020.

“Within the UK we have a significant concentration of space capabilities in East and South- East of England and we rely heavily on the European Space Agency to represent us. As a minor partner in the European programme, this provides significant challenges for our members to access global opportunities. We are working with EEDA to encourage industry to take up the space challenge and win new business. This first conference attracted significant support from major players in the sector, including Astrium, The European Space Agency, Boeing, The British National Space Centre and Cranfield University, indicating the depth of support for this high technology international growth market. It became evident from several speakers at the conference that technology transfer provides major opportunities for entrepreneurial firms to exploit the investment into other markets”.

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