ADM’s annual Space Summit took place last week in Canberra, bringing together experts from industry, government and academia to discuss the present and future of Australia’s burgeoning space industry. Throughout the day, thought leaders outlined some of the challenges facing the sector, as well as the unique strengths that Australian industry brings to bear in the global marketplace. Conversations were also spurred about the definition and importance of sovereignty, and how industry and government can work together to develop and educate a next-generation workforce.
After opening remarks from summit chair, Dr Melrose Brown, Brooke Stokes from McKinsey and Company provided a high-level overview of the global space market and Australia’s place within it. She said that a few key themes were emerging in the industry, which was important for Australia to understand and capitalise on. The first of these was participation, which has increased massively in space since 2018, which has in turn driven increased investment across the sector.
One data point, which drove conversation at the summit, was the fact that in Australia the government is still providing two-thirds of the overall investment into the industry. Despite this, Stokes noted that there was an air of optimism about the future, driven by the sheer diversity of markets that now make up the sector, as well as convergence between the private and public sectors.
“It's also an exciting time. It's great to see the broad-based association here today, public sector, private sector, a whole gamut from established companies to early-stage ones I think it's a reflection of the growing importance of space, in the Australian economy,” she said.
Dara Williams, the Deputy Head of the Australian Space Agency (ASA) then provided an overview of how the ASA has used public resources to help develop Australian private sector capability. She informed the audience that, since 2018 when the ASA was founded, it has helped deliver more than $2 billion of investment into the sector, supporting over 600 organisations across multiple facets of the industry. Williams made it clear that the ASA’s role extends beyond the purely financial, and said that ASA support helped drive brand recognition and access to overseas markets for Australian firms, via events like Expo 2020 in Dubai.
“We’ve seen recipients of Australian Space Agency grants start to scale, leveraging modest investment and [the] brand recognition power of a space agency to drive investment rounds and new contracts,” she noted.
This theme, of Australian Space Companies, making do, and succeeding with less was also reflected by industry leaders. Adam Gilmour, CEO and Founder, of Gilmour Space told the ADM audience that one of Australian industries' greatest strengths was that it is very capital efficient. Speaking of fellow Australian Firm, Fleet Technologies, Gilmour said that it was recognised within the industry just how efficient they are, relative to American or European firms.
“We [Fleet and Gilmour] both said the same thing, we are very capital-efficient because we have to be now… I like being poor because it makes me hungry, but I think there are strategic benefits in the future if I don't get 200 million dollars [because] I have to figure out how I can get to the same place with a quarter of the money, and if we do that, and we are doing that, that's how we become competitive [in the global marketplace],” Gilmour explained.
He also brought up one of the main challenges facing Australian industry, which was almost universally appreciated by the speakers; a lack of Australian talent willing and able to work in the space sector. Asked for advice on recruiting talent, Gilmour opined that Australian companies have to be willing to not only employ but create talent.
“Don’t be picky about the job skills that [applicants] have because they're not, they're just not out there [in Australia]. We took a philosophy of, if there are five traits that someone needs we'll take two or them, and we'll train the rest ourselves and that’s served us well,” he added.
Other presenters also spoke to the education challenge, which they said should be addressed by making Australia an attractive (and easy) destination for global talent, while also encouraging the commercialisation of academic research and development.
The question of foreign investment and human capital also spurred discussion about what makes something a sovereign Australian capability. In a presentation on growing Australian primes, Adam Gilmour reflected on how definitions of sovereign are different across the Western world, from the United States - where everything needs to be American - to the U.K. where end products created from trusted supply chains are seen as sovereign.