Why Orbex's EIC Accelerator Rocket Tanks Never Reached Orbit

Orbex set out to launch small satellites from the north of Scotland on a rocket burning renewable bio-propane. In 2019 the European Commission gave it €2,497,937.40 to build the part that was meant to make that rocket cheaper than its rivals: carbon fibre fuel tanks light enough to cut the vehicle's dry mass by up to 30%, according to CORDIS. The tank was built and tested. The rocket never flew.

On 18 February 2026 the High Court in London appointed Chad Griffin, Geoffrey Paul Rowley and Graham Smith of FRP Advisory as joint administrators of Orbital Express Launch Limited, which traded as Orbex, according to the London Gazette. A failed Series D funding round and a collapsed takeover had left it "without the capital required to continue its development programme", the administrators said, as reported by Scottish Financial News. Companies House lists the company as in administration.

Where Orbex Stands Now

Orbex no longer trades. The administrators' proposals of 10 April 2026, filed at Companies House, say the business had stopped trading before their appointment and that all but eight of its 163 employees were made redundant on the day. Its Danish subsidiary, Orbital Express Launch ApS, which ran the engine plant, had already been placed into bankruptcy in late January 2026, after the preferred buyer chose not to take it on. European Spaceflight reported that 90 employees in Denmark lost their jobs on 20 January 2026.

The buyer was The Exploration Company, a French space start-up. The two firms announced a letter of intent on 21 January 2026; on 11 February Orbex filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators instead, according to European Spaceflight and NASASpaceflight. "Disappointing doesn't come close to describing how we feel about this moment," chief executive Phil Chambers said, as quoted by European Spaceflight.

What remained has been sold in three parts. According to the administrators' progress report of 10 September 2026, 69 parties were contacted and 15 offers received; one bidder for the whole business was given exclusivity against a £25,000 deposit but missed its milestones. Sutherland Spaceport Limited, the subsidiary holding the lease for Orbex's planned spaceport, went into liquidation on 12 June 2026, and its lease, intellectual property and site assets were sold to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Scottish development agency, a sale European Spaceflight reported in August 2026. The Kinloss test site assets went to a separate buyer whose name is not public; the Ministry of Defence did not renew Orbex's licence to occupy the site, which expired in April 2026. In October 2026 the Portuguese company Omnidea bought Orbex's manufacturing assets and intellectual property in Forres and took on an initial team of former Orbex staff, according to ADS Advance and Wikipedia. The price was not disclosed. The Orbex legal entity itself was not part of the sale and remains in administration.

The Technology: a Tank Without a Liner

A rocket carries mostly propellant, and every kilogram of tank and structure is a kilogram of payload lost. Prime was a two-stage rocket 19 metres tall, designed to carry up to 180 kg to low Earth orbit, with six engines on the first stage and one on the second, burning bio-propane with liquid oxygen, according to TechCrunch and NASASpaceflight. Both propellants are cryogenic, which is what the PRIME project exploited: the CORDIS objective describes a tanking arrangement that uses "the properties of dual-cryogenic propellants" to reduce inert mass by as much as 30% over traditional designs.

Orbex's founder and then chief executive Chris Larmour called the PRIME result "perhaps the first liner-less carbon fibre cryotank made in Europe", in the project's CORDIS results summary. The company also claimed the rocket would emit up to 96% less than comparable fossil-fuelled vehicles. Neither the 30% mass saving nor the emissions figure was demonstrated in flight, because there was no flight.

What the EIC Grant Promised, and What It Delivered

Orbex was selected at the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of the EIC Accelerator, under its legal name Orbital Express Launch Limited of London, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies. The list names no other beneficiary for the project. CORDIS, however, shows two linked third parties that shared the grant: Orbital Express Launch ApS in Hvidovre, Denmark, with €167,043.77, and Orbital Express Launch UG in Munich, with €35,000; Orbex itself received €2,295,893.63. The grant agreement was signed on 27 June 2019, when the United Kingdom was still an EU member, and the project ran from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2022 at a total cost of €3,576,559.70.

The final periodic report, covering January 2021 to June 2022, says Orbex staff "designed & realized a prototype tank", drafted patents, and pressure-tested the instrumented tank before proving the concept in cryogenic conditions. The results summary adds that the team built a full-scale engineering qualification model, matured the design of the engine thrust structure, was granted a patent extended to 13 other territories including the United States, and grew from 25 to 90 full-time staff. The patent claims come from the company's own reporting and were not checked against a patent register for this article. In May 2022, a month before the project ended, Orbex unveiled the first full-scale prototype of Prime on a launch pad, CORDIS notes. In February 2026 the company released images of second-stage and first-stage tank assemblies built for flight vehicles, NASASpaceflight reported.

1. Full-scale low-mass carbon fibre cryogenic tankDeliveredBuilt, pressure-tested and tested at cryogenic temperature, per the CORDIS report; flight tank assemblies shown in 2026.
2. Project completed on scheduleDeliveredRan to its planned end date of 30 June 2022.
3. Patent protectionCompany claimGranted and extended to 13 territories, per the CORDIS summary; not independently checked.
4. Up to 30% lower dry massNot demonstratedNo published test data and no flight.
5. A European micro-launcher on the marketNot achievedPrime never launched; Orbex entered administration in February 2026.

The project delivered its hardware on time. What it was for did not happen. The CORDIS objective framed the tanks as the means to "introduce a European micro-launcher to the global market", and the market never saw one.

The Money and the Missed Launch Dates

Orbex raised money steadily. A £30 million public and private package in July 2018 brought in Sunstone Technology Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Elecnor Deimos alongside the UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency and Horizon 2020, according to Grupo Elecnor. A £40.4 million Series C in October 2022 was led by the Scottish National Investment Bank, according to High-Tech Gründerfonds and TechCrunch, and a further £16.7 million followed in April 2024, according to Voxel Matters. In January 2025 the UK government took a stake with a £20 million investment from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of the Series D round, according to Advanced Television.

The sources describe the government money differently. The administrators put total funding at £138.5 million, £33.3 million in grants and £105.1 million in equity, with public investment of £76.7 million, including £26 million from the UK government in 2025 and £29 million from the Scottish National Investment Bank. NASASpaceflight described the £26 million as "taxpayer-backed loans". The administrators list the department as a secured creditor owed about £6 million under charges created in September and October 2025, alongside Highlands and Islands Enterprise, owed about £675,000. How the £26 million split between equity and loans is not public.

Launch dates slipped throughout. In June 2021 Larmour told The Register the company was "working towards the end of 2022". In October 2022 the target was 2023, per TechCrunch. In December 2024 Orbex paused construction of its own spaceport in Sutherland, moved its first launch to SaxaVord in Shetland and began a larger rocket, Proxima, aiming for a first launch in 2025, according to Shetland News. At the collapse, the administrators wrote, the company was targeting late 2026.

The filed accounts show the cost of the wait. The group lost £16,182,325 in 2023, up from £8,186,218 in 2022, and its cash fell from £32,383,897 to £15,594,900 over the same year, according to the 2023 group accounts at Companies House. The auditors, BDO, flagged a material uncertainty over going concern. The 2024 accounts, due by 31 December 2025, were never filed.

Why It Mattered to Europe

The PRIME objective was explicitly European: an "EU-based orbital micro-launch vehicle" offering lower-cost access to space "from mainland Europe", according to CORDIS, which describes small satellite operators' reliance on rideshare slots on large launchers as a source of delays and unsuitable orbits. In July 2025 the European Space Agency preselected Orbex as one of five companies for its European Launcher Challenge, alongside Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space and Rocket Factory Augsburg, a programme meant to reduce reliance on non-European launch providers, according to NASASpaceflight. Orbex's collapse left four.

The case also shows how Brexit cut across the grant. The project was signed while the UK was in the EU; the company's base stayed in Scotland, and its engines were built in Denmark. When the Danish subsidiary went bankrupt, the administrators needed a Danish export licence to release company data held there before the Forres sale could complete, and the sale also needed approval under the UK's National Security and Investment Act, the progress report says. Part of what the EU paid for has now passed to Omnidea, a company based in an EU member state, though whether Omnidea will use the tank technology is not public.

The Verdict

Orbex's administrators and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published reporting, linked throughout.