The same day that we speak with Arkadia Space, they have just met at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències with the new commissioner to coordinate the Aerospace PERTE, which has allocated more than 4,000 million euros to promote projects related to this sector. They also speak at the meeting about the "opportunity" that Elx would host, as it hopes, the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency, something that this recently created Valencian startup sees very favorably.
“It would give a certain relevance to the territory because the meetings with delegates would be in the Valencian Community and that in some way allows you to enable the ecosystem so that many more meetings take place, more meetings and that more events and activities in general are catalyzed. We would be better known”, admits Francho García, CEO of Arkadia Space.
Having the headquarters in the same community would give projection to this young company specialized in producing chemical propulsion systems for space vehicles based on green fuels. Also to an industry that in the Valencian Community has few known references, with the exception of PLD Space, an Elx company and recently awarded one of the distinctions for business merit that, on the occasion of October 9, is granted by the Generalitat Valenciana.
Precisely three of the four members that make up the Arkadia team come from PLS Space: "We were employee number 8, 10 and 11. Being there we were lucky enough to see how that market for launching satellites was being created," says García. , which explains how PLD Space solved the problem of launching satellites, which was very expensive, with the introduction of new rockets and other technology that “made it very cheap”.
Although he argues that, while there, they realized that "once you arrived in space, the satellites have to move for various functions and services and that problem was not solved, which is that of propulsion." That is what they are now doing in a new company that they created within STARTUPV and Ideas UPV, since one of its members, Francisco Espinosa, the director of Mechanical Engineering, is an industrial engineer from the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Hence its link and the opportunity to participate recently in the 5U CV Contest, in which companies and projects born in one of the five public universities of the Valencian Community compete. They won the prize for the Best University Startup, endowed with 9,000 euros.
Along with García and Espinosa, Ismael Gutiérrez is the propulsion director, and Sergio Soler is the automation director. Now they are looking for new profiles, including a sales engineer and a rocket propulsion engineer to join the team. “It is almost impossible to find people who have the experience of having worked in green propulsion and many times the candidates come from countries outside the European Union. Finding that talent by restricting it to Europe is more complicated, especially with many years of experience”, says the CEO.
If all goes well, since they are in the interview period, they will double the workforce before the end of the year and incorporate new profiles to their office, located at the Castellón Airport, the location they chose mainly because they needed a place to test their engines. which make a lot of noise.
“It is not very easy to find a place that allows you to make noise without people complaining or with legal protection, and Castellón airport had both and was the only place of all those we were looking for in which we could also have our offices in the same site and also be very well connected at the infrastructure level”, explains the young entrepreneur.
From there they have been working for less than two years, a time in which they have obtained various contracts, including with the European Space Agency, as well as research and development projects of the European Commission through the Galactica project.
The financing of the project was carried out by colleagues in the sector who "wanted to bet on the company", as well as by an ENISA loan. In August they received a visit from the Minister of Finance, Arcadi Spain, and the director of the IVF, Manuel Illueca, who told them about the entity's financing options.
