Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), Scotland’s economic development agency, has bought the assets of Sutherland Spaceport Ltd, the Orbex subsidiary set up to build a vertical launch site on the north coast of Scotland. It announced the purchase on 25 August. The seller was the company’s joint liquidators.
HIE says it will now review what can be done with a site that is only partly built. “Having acquired these assets, our next move will be to work with the local community and players in the space sector to inform future decisions on how to make the most of the spaceport’s potential to deliver long-term economic benefits,” said David Oxley, HIE’s director of strategic projects.
Oxley and Stephen Flynn, Scotland’s cabinet secretary for economy, tourism and transport, both signalled support for carrying on with the launch facility despite the uncertainty.
How the spaceport got here
Work on the infrastructure for vertical launches stopped in December 2024. Orbex said then that it was pausing construction to put its resources into a new medium-lift rocket called Proxima.
The parent company never got the money it wanted. It had been trying to raise capital through a Series D round to finish its smaller Prime rocket, and the round failed. In January, The Exploration Company signed a letter of intent to buy the business, which looked like a lifeline. The deal collapsed in early February. Orbex began insolvency proceedings on 11 February and entered administration on 18 February.
Sutherland Spaceport Ltd held on a few months longer. It went into compulsory liquidation on 18 June, and liquidators from the London firm FRP Advisory put its assets up for sale, including the infrastructure already built on the site.
