US satellite maker Planet Labs opens Berlin factory as military demand booms
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The California-based satellite maker Planet Labs will open a new factory on Tuesday in Berlin, making it the latest in a string of companies to expand their footprint in Germany as its defence budget booms.
The earth observation company, founded in 2010 by a trio of former Nasa scientists, will manufacture its Pelican high-resolution optical satellites at a rate of up to 60 per year at the new site.
Chief executive Will Marshall told the FT that the decision to open the company’s first production facility outside California — an investment that he said would be worth “an eight-figure sum” in euros — was partly driven by its existing technical capacity in Berlin. But he added that Germany was leading the European drive to reduce its dependence on the US for space-based intelligence.
He said the new facility would double the company’s annual global production output in response to “tremendous demand” for a range of purposes including military and intelligence.
Originally founded primarily to track the impact of climate change, defence work today makes up around 60 per cent of the company’s business.
“The defence [part] has grown the fastest,” Marshall said, pointing to the surge in European defence budgets in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and waning US support for the continent’s security. “We are leaning in.”
Planet Labs, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has had a presence in Germany for more than a decade.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius last year announced that his country would spend €35bn by 2030 on building up its own satellite-based communication and observation systems. “It’s a huge expansion of funds for the space sector,” Marshall said.
Planet Labs supplies customers with data from its own existing fleet of 200 satellites in orbit as well as offering them the chance to buy and operate their own ones. The company has already struck deals with Japan, Sweden and Germany.
It also has a deal to provide satellite services to Ukraine that is paid for by the German government.
Kyiv’s reliance on the US for satellite technology was rammed home last year when the Trump administration briefly blocked Ukraine’s access to data from the American company Maxar Technologies, now known as Vantor.
Ukraine was also prevented by Elon Musk from using his Starlink communications network in 2022 during an operation around the occupied Crimean Peninsula. Musk said that he feared it could provoke a nuclear escalation with Russia.
Marshall said he could not discuss in detail how Ukraine used Planet Labs’ technology, but he said: “We help them to monitor Russian for threat. We’re their early warning system. In a broader sense it contributes to their information advantage.”
The company is also hoping to become part of a large German military procurement programme called Spock 2, which aims to create an orbital reconnaissance network for the country’s armed forces.
