Scottish Couple Win The Space Race! Wealth Week Episode 27

1 год назад

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After watching one of my recent videos someone asked if I had anything good to say about the UK. If we’re talking about politicians or central bankers, the answer is a firm No! But, if we’re talking about entrepreneurs who defy all the odds to still achieve success in a country where the mediocre majority seems to have deleted that word from their vocabulary, my response is a resounding Yes! A brilliant example of this spirit is unfolding now in the harshest, most challenging environment that Britain has to offer. I’m talking about the island of Unst in the Shetlands. I was born in Aberdeen and raised on Tyneside so I regard myself as a Northerner. But I’m positively equatorial compared to Unsters(?) who occupy the most northerly inhabited part of the Kingdom. All 635 of them. If you were going to build a scalable, high value business this might not be the first location that springs to mind. Unless you are operating in a very specific niche that is about as high tech as you can get – space travel.
Beaufort Private Equity is in the middle of raising growth equity for a Swiss company that owns an aerospace fund so this is a sector close to my heart at the moment. One of their board members and shareholders is Dennis Muilenburg, the former CEO of Boeing. When I interviewed him recently he said that he is more excited about developments in the aerospace sector in the 2020s than he’s been at any point in his 40 year career. With more and more satellites being launched and private entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos accelerating the rate of progress, this is a big and rapidly growing sector that is going to need more and more places from which to launch its assets into space. Which brings us back to Unst and the SaxaVord Spaceport. If your ambition is to send a rocket into space, the obvious starting point is to own a gin distillery in the Shetlands. Enter husband and wife team Frank and Debbie Strang. SaxaVord is a 20 acre site used as a World War 2 air force base that became a radar tracking station during the Cold War. In 2004, presumably as part of the hubris after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the RAF decided to sell the site. The Strangs had both served in the RAF but that wasn’t the driver for acquiring the site - they bought it with an eye to diversifying into green tourism for people wanting to see the dolphins and orcas that inhabit these waters.
They say that fortune favours the brave. In 2017 the UK Space Agency ran a competition to look for a spaceport that would be used in partnership with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin who were looking for a satellite launch site in Britain. The University of Leicester carried out a feasibility study for the UK Space Agency and the Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation and Space Technology. The conclusion was that SaxaVord is the best possible site in the UK because it’s ideally positioned for access to polar orbit while the surrounding water gives a safe environment should anything go wrong. The sea space and air space around the site is very quiet and the surrounding cliffs give it a natural security.
So the positive news from the report cued a change of plan from the Strangs and the recruitment of a three man team to pursue their new rocket fuelled dream. However, their euphoria was swiftly followed by a punch in the stomach when the £23 million Lockheed funding was given to the competing Sutherland spaceport. In a scenario that is oh so familiar to Beaufort members, it was left to four hundred private investors to get the SaxaVord project off the ground, led by Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen who now lives in Scotland. Frank and Debbie have re-mortgaged their homes, used up their life savings and had to cope with bailiffs knocking on their door as they sacrificed everything to keep the project moving. They now have a team of 82 people, many of whom have worked for half wages or for free to keep the dream alive. Tell that to the civil servants, the railway workers and the junior doctors. Work has progressed for four years, interrupted by power cuts, blizzards and the occasional inquisitive sheep. Just getting materials on site is a massive logistical undertaking, while the island itself is covered in old war time buildings and land enclosures that date back to Viking times. To keep things moving during short winter days construction has continued in all-night shifts under floodlights. Add in the need for work to stop during May and June while endangered bird species are nesting and the need to build 12 soundproof underground chambers for otters and you start to understand just how challenging this has been. The company had to spend £9 million just to strengthen the roads to withstand the heavy cranes needed for the construction of the first three launch pads.
More at www.beaufortprivateequity.com

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