Business Opportunities
Let’s talk business
The European space industry employs more than 30,000 highly skilled professionals accounting for an annual turnover of between 5-6 Billion Euro. ESA place contracts in the European industry for approximately 1.6 Billion Euro per year (average 1996-2000) either directly or on behalf of ESA by prime contractors.
ESA is the most important customer for the European space industry.
The objectives of ESA procurements are two sided: to accomplish ESA space missions and to support the competitiveness of the European space industry.
One of the cornerstones of the ESA convention is the principle of geographical return: contracts are placed in a given country proportional to the participation of that country to the ESA budget. Some programs such as science and general studies are so-called mandatory programmes where all member states participate according to their BNP, other programmes are optional where member states can decide individually at what level they want to participate. Within this principle, ESA gives equal opportunities to companies and institutions in all countries on a fair competition basis.
One basic element of fair competition is equal access to knowledge about business opportunities for all categories of companies. In essence this is what the Business Opportunities web-side is about: acting as focal point for companies looking for news on business opportunities, with ESA and also outside the ESA context.
The Business Opportunities web-page is also the natural entry point to ESA’s invitation to tender system EMITS, where upcoming and open invitations to tenders (ITT) can be found.