It is widely accepted that SMEs play an important role in the development of a sustainable European space industry. This is underlined by several stakeholders within the industry and by public authorities at national and international level. But when these stakeholders are developing a policy to support the crucial role of SMEs one element is still lacking: what do the SMEs actually represent? What is their importance within the overall space sector? The investigation is based on the analysis of annual financial data from 2014 to 2018 of SME having worked with ESA in the years 2015 to 2019, i.e. 1069 firms in total.
SME4SPACE, the representative European organisation of SMEs in the space industry, wants to provide an answer to this need with objectively verifiable figures. With the support of the SME Office of ESA we ordered an academic study from the KU Leuven, Belgium. A team consisting of Professors Simon Dekeyser, Peter Teirlinck and Marleen Willekens of the Faculty of Economics and Business accepted this task and the first results are now available
Download and read the relative leaflet summarising the first figures.
With the support of ESA SME Office
