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Paris, 24 May 2021. – The European Space Agency (ESA) creates the new position of Director of Commercialisation, Industry & Procurement.
The new director is responsible for elaborating and implementing ESA’s industrial policy, representing the Director General in all relations with industry, elaborating and implementing the agency’s procurement rules and policies, and conducting negotiations and managing procurement for all activities and programs, ESA said.
The Director will also support the industrialisation and the commercialisation of space products and services, the scale-up on global markets, as well as access to investments and finance for European space industry.
The position will be based at ESA headquarters in Paris.
The EU – which has some different member states than ESA – had recently relaunched its former European Agency for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GSA) in Prague as the new EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).
EUSPA will be “responsible for promoting the commercial market uptake of Galileo, EGNOS, and now also Copernicus together with the Entrusted Entities of the European Earth Observation programme,” the agency said with the announcement of the relaunch in late April.
ESA’s Agenda 2025, which the new Director General of the agency, Josef Aschbacher, presented in early April, mentions a business focus and commercialization as one of the top priorities of his five-year directorate.
