[Satellite News 11-17-10] Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) is set make a major breakthrough in the United States in 2011, CEO Matt Perkins told Satellite News.
Perkins, who has lead the small satellite manufacturer’s efforts to win studies and sub-system contracts, said the company is entering the next year with a number of prospects and expects to win a significant mission contract the first half of 2011.
    “We have had some success with three SSTL developed platforms included in the NASA Rapid 3 catalogue. That has generated significant interest among U.S. customers. The big focus is to win a mission, demonstrating to the U.S. marketplace just how effective the SSTL approach can be in delivering on-time and on-budget to new U.S. customers,” he said.
Despite the global economic recession, Perkins said SSTL has not seen any major changes to the market as a result of the recession. “We have seen a certain slowdown in commercial mission opportunities, however, export, government and institutional spending has been fairly consistent. I do think in these difficult times, that value for money has become a much more significant factor in the award of contracts and is reflected in the range of prospects that SSTL is pursuing.”
    In fact, Perkins said the company is on course for a better 2010 than 2009 based on the contract it secured for satellite navigation payloads for the European Space Agency (ESA) in January and a medium resolution, optical mission for Kazakhstan alongside it parent company, Astrium. “We still have a little bit of time left in 2010 left and I am confident we will secure at least one more mission in the near future. In value terms, we have secured more contracts this year, than we did in 2009 with real prospects to win more missions this year. I expect that trend to continue next year.”
    Perkins is still looking to sign at least one more major deal before the end of the year. “We have a launch campaign at the end of this year for two Nigerian satellites to be followed next year with a number of spacecraft missions to be launched. These are all important to our strategic growth and our reputation,” he said. “The European satellite navigation payloads contract is by far the largest contract we have secured and there is substantial effort going into that. We have also just passed the Manufacture Readiness Review for the EarthCARE MSI instrument, another major ESA activity. At the same time we are working on a number of interesting prospects, and we hope to sign at least one breakthrough deal by the end of the year.”
    The company also is seeing major changes in how its overall revenues are being derived, with a move to more generate more revenues from Europe. “All of our business is export based and has traditionally been outside of the European market. Over the last few years this has changed and most of our European activity is focused on ESA. There has been a change in our income streams due to securing the European satellite navigation payloads. I can say that our total European activities will constitute a significant part of our overall revenues this year and it is higher than two years ago. Our other strategic activity for ESA to provide lower cost platforms to enable ESA to undertake more missions at a faster refresh rate.”