Amongst the usual Brexit chaos, we often share and comment on other news items that peak our interest. We have a wider interest in all of the commercial activities within the European Union and have paid particular attention to the car industry, energy and occasionally space.
We joined in a twitter conversation yesterday that involved Danish company, Orbex, where somebody had asked them the very innocent question of where the prospect of a no deal Brexit will leave them in terms of manufacturing, support etc. Their answer didn’t quite paint the full picture so we joined in the conversation and pointed out that their manufacturing was done in Denmark and Germany and their UK facility was only just opened in February of this year. And the facility was opened at the same time they unveiled their first rocket. So, it was a fair point to make that this rocket must’ve been produced elsewhere. In fact, we had already read somewhere that their production was in Denmark & Germany. So, we set about backing up our statement.
In Forbes magazine at the end of last year the following article was published, within which Orbex fully partook in an interview and we would therefore assume were in agreement with the content of the article. In fact, they must have been because they shared it extensively on twitter etc.
In this article, the journalist clearly states… “the company builds and tests its rocket engines at a site near Copenhagen in Denmark with plans for another in Scotland. It has barely a couple of dozen employees, but the company has managed to raise plenty of money towards its goals.”
So, then they blocked us on twitter with some bizarre rant about 80% of their staff being based in their UK HQ (which only opened just over a month ago). The article above suggests they have only a couple dozen staff, so we translated that to 24 and whilst our comment made no question of where their staff were based, it would be fair deduction from those statements to say there were 16 staff in UK, which leaves another 8 elsewhere (presumably Denmark & Germany) – none of which has anything to do with the comment we made about their production facilities being in Denmark & Germany, other than to highlight that by their statement there are 8 people involved in that.
Strange behaviour for a company with UK public funding (see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lockheed-martin-and-orbex-to-launch-uk-into-new-space-age ). We would expect a more professional response when we are simply highlighting a misunderstanding from somebody expressing a genuine interest. Surely a company that is using UK taxpayers money* should be a bit better versed in the need for transparency and disclosure to avoid people then asking questions of them when they shut down genuine lines of discussion. We may just have to dig a bit more and see what exactly they are trying to hide.
*UK Space Agency is UK Government agency funded out of the UK Govt. purse.
Brexit and Other News 