Aerospace giant to move to Space Park Leicester

Aerospace giant Airbus has revealed it plans to relocate its Leicestershire-based Earth Observation expert team to Space Park Leicester when its current lease expires.

Airbus will move into the fist phase of the £25m scheme when it opens at the end of 2020. The team is currently based at Meriden Park.

Colin Paynter, UK managing director, Airbus Defence and Space, said: “Airbus has a long relationship with the University, collaborating on a range of activities. We hope to see a number of benefits from our involvement with the Space Park, from capturing research outputs which will seed our product and process innovation to increasing the scale and quality of researchers and talent in the EO & Data Analytics domain.”

Edmund Burke, acting vice chancellor for the University of Leicester, said: “Space Park Leicester will be transformational for our University, City, region and the UK Space Industry. I am delighted that Airbus Intelligence, who have been a long-standing strategic partner, will locate to the Space Park. This will attract students to study in Leicester and, afterwards, to pursue their professional career here. It will also help unlock the predicted 2,500 new jobs being created by the Space Park investment.”

Grant Bourhill, CEO of Leicester Science Parks said: “We are delighted that Airbus Intelligence, a key strategic partner for the University, are locating at Space Park Leicester. We have a long and successful track record of working together with Airbus on impactful, industry-relevant research and providing the next-generation of talent. The presence of such an established, global leader in space and its applications at Space Park Leicester, will attract other supply-chain partners as well as encourage the development of new start-ups, creating a dynamic industry-academic cluster.”