Luxembourg/Sydney-based company Kleos Space have successfully closed $11 million in funding and began trading on the ASX this morning.
Co-founder and CEO of the company, Andy Bowyer, feels that the interest shown in Kleos’ by investors is reflective of the worlds current desire to advance space-powered intelligence, particularly in Australia.
“The capital raising had significant interest from Australian based institutional groups. Our listing comes at a time where governments around the world are seeking new technology to protect their borders, and we believe Kleos will provide a solution,” Bowyer said.
Backed by the Luxembourg government, the company’s satellites will be able to locate radio transmissions from anywhere on Earth, detecting where the transmission was transmitted from, and when.
“When ships turn off their transponders at sea, our satellites can capture the ships other transmission activity from space. This other data is critical for governments, and will give them the ability to track ships used by drug and people smugglers, terrorists, pirates, illegal fishermen and those in need of search and rescue,” Mr Bowyer said.
“We have a first mover advantage to work with governments and commercial information users in the global $41 billion intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) market. We then aim to scale our customer base into wider non-maritime and non-defence markets such as environmental protection, search and rescue services and insurance services.”
Plans to construct the company’s first satellites are already underway.
“We have recently signed an $3.5 million agreement with Nasdaq-listed GomSpace who will deliver our first satellite system by mid 2019. We are also in early stage discussions with a number of high profile space race contenders who have the ability to launch our satellite into orbit," Bowyer added.
After the successful first mission, Kleos hopes to grow their number of satellite systems and strengthen the company’s service offering.
“We are aiming for 20 satellite systems in low Earth orbit until we have continuous worldwide coverage. This improves the company’s service offering by providing surveillance across a number of markets, with near real-time information tailored to a customer’s needs."
Peter Round, chairman of Kleos Space, said the company hopes that the government will become one of their future customers in the company’s regional expansion plans.
“With Australia’s large coastal borders under the constant threat of people smuggling and illegal fishing, our satellite technology offers an alternative to current land-based solutions, which are expensive, technically limited by range, and subject to counter threats,” Round said.
In May, the federal government introduced a new legislation aimed at growing Australia’s satellite launch capability, and announced $26 million to establish a national space agency, which launched on July 1. In 2017 the Government also pledged to invest $500 million in improving Australia’s space-based ISR capabilities.
“It is clear that Australia is seeking new technologies to support its defence operations, border protection and humanitarian missions, and we plan to leverage our Canberra based office to align ourselves with these Australian Government initiatives," Round concluded.