Omnidea has acquired manufacturing assets and intellectual property from Orbex, giving the Portuguese aerospace group a production base in Forres and retaining part of the specialist Scottish engineering capability built around the failed Prime small-launch vehicle programme.
The transaction covers selected UK manufacturing equipment and intellectual property rather than the Orbex corporate entity itself. Omnidea will establish operations at the former Forres facility, where structures development and fabrication will sit alongside work on flight and ground-system electronics, while an initial group of former Orbex employees is joining the new operation and further recruitment is planned as programmes develop.
Assets connected with Orbex’s Kinloss test activity and the Sutherland spaceport are being handled separately, leaving the acquisition focused on the manufacturing and engineering base in Moray. The distinction separates productive capability from the wider corporate and infrastructure commitments accumulated by Orbex before it entered administration in February 2026 after attempts to secure additional investment or a strategic transaction failed.
Orbex had spent several years developing Prime from Forres, building expertise across launch-vehicle structures, propulsion integration, avionics, electronics and manufacturing while preparing for commercial launch operations from Scotland. Administration interrupted that programme before the vehicle reached operational service, creating the prospect that specialist equipment and employees would disperse even if individual technologies retained value outside the original launch business.
Omnidea enters the transaction with an existing aerospace engineering operation rather than as a financial buyer of surplus factory assets. The group traces its development to work around the European Space Agency and is active across propulsion, satellite technologies, fluid-control systems and related research, with operations in Portugal, Germany, Spain, Romania, Greece, Australia and the UK. Its British company is based at Space Park Leicester, giving the Forres operation an existing corporate route into the UK rather than requiring a new market entry structure.
The manufacturing capability being retained in Scotland complements several areas already present inside the wider group. Structures and electronics can sit alongside Omnidea’s propulsion and fluid-system work, allowing programmes to draw on a broader combination of mechanical, electrical and propulsion engineering without rebuilding every capability at a single continental European location.
Forres also provides physical production capacity that is difficult to recreate quickly once dismantled. Launch hardware and other space systems require specialist tooling, controlled manufacturing processes, electronics integration, inspection and test routines developed around unusually demanding structural and environmental requirements, while employees familiar with those processes carry knowledge that may not be captured completely in drawings or equipment specifications.
Retaining those capabilities does not revive the Prime launcher programme or restore Orbex as an operating company. Omnidea has not announced that it will continue the vehicle, and the transaction should instead be read as the transfer of useful industrial assets into a different aerospace group whose future programmes can make use of the equipment, intellectual property and retained workforce.
The acquisition comes as UK policy places greater emphasis on domestic launch, space manufacturing and assured access to orbit. A £7.8 billion national space programme announced in September links launch infrastructure, satellite communications and in-orbit technology to wider industrial growth, although strategy funding alone does not determine which companies or manufacturing sites ultimately secure production work.
Omnidea will therefore need contracts rather than inherited capability to determine the eventual scale of Forres. The company has not disclosed the purchase price, capital expenditure plan, initial headcount or expected production volumes, leaving recruitment and programme allocation as the practical indicators of whether the operation develops into a substantial manufacturing centre or remains a smaller engineering base.
The chosen roles provide some indication of how the facility will be used. Structures fabrication places the site directly inside physical hardware manufacture, while flight and ground-system electronics create links to launch vehicles, test equipment and other space platforms that require integrated electrical systems. That combination gives Forres a wider potential workload than a factory dedicated entirely to one launcher configuration, provided Omnidea can bring programmes through qualification and into repeat production.
European launcher development is already highly competitive, with several companies progressing vehicles through testing and early commercial programmes while institutional customers seek more sovereign launch capacity. Smaller engineering groups have to decide carefully which capabilities justify ownership because propulsion, structures, avionics and launch operations each demand different facilities and specialist staff; acquiring an existing factory can shorten that process, although the saving disappears quickly if the inherited assets do not match future contracts.
Former Orbex employees returning to the site give Omnidea a starting workforce familiar with the equipment and production environment, reducing some of the restart risk as the group establishes its own operating procedures. The longer-term measure will be the volume and complexity of engineering work assigned to Scotland, with the retained assets becoming strategically useful only when they are supporting funded programmes rather than preserving the footprint of a launcher project that has already ended.
