Korean spacetech gains finance support from Korean VCs and banks and plans to develop its EU operations from its Luxembourg base.
Photo: With the Series B Capital, Contec plans to further expand its ground station network and services / Credits © NASA
Contec, a Korean spin off company from the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, has signed off a $11 million Series B funding.
Based in Korea with a subsidiary in Belval’s Technoport, the group operates space ground station and satellite image processing and application services.
Series B financing essentially denotes the second round of funding for a business through investment, including private equity investors and venture capitalists. At that stage, the company has met certain milestones and is past the initial startup stage. Usually Series B investors pay a higher share price for investing in the company than Series A investors.
The consortium of investors included Korean VC Atinum Investment, the Korean Development Bank, the Industrial Bank of Korea, Korean Investment Partners, and IntellianTech a global solutions provider of satellite communications technology.
“Contec Space has almost finalized its NDA with SnT (University of Luxembourg) and is expecting a cross border R&D project.”
Targets for 2022
“With the Series B Capital, Contec plans to further expand its ground station network and services around Europe, North America, Middle East, Southeast Asia and aims to achieve this target by 2022,” Contec Space’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary explains in a press release.
“The company is “looking for partnership and collaboration with for instance European business partners to further develop its business of satellite image application service and free space optical ground stations technologies.”
Contec’s solutions range among others from monitoring and control software for ground station, to multi-mission operation systems for ground station, high-speed satellite image processing and object detection on standard satellite image data.
Its satellite image application services include data collection such as imaging, environmental data, resources information, etc., from satellite data suppliers around the globe, and are dedicated to client such as government space agencies, universities, research institutions, and private companies.
Established in January of 2015 the group currently employs around 30 engineers.
Launched in Luxembourg in 2019, Contec Space is the spacetech’s HQ in Europe. Its mission is to look for EU business partners to develop upcoming ground stations in Europe or R&D projects, with the aid of EUREKA project support.
“Contec Space has almost finalized its NDA with SnT (University of Luxembourg) and is expecting a cross border R&D project,” its press release says. “Furthermore, Contec Space is planning to develop a new business idea for promoting new space tech with space education initiatives”.
In 2018 and 2019, the company took part in the ICT Spring Europe fair in Luxembourg before it announced the opening of its European headquarters in the Grand-Duchy.
