Sign up to FREE email alerts from businessInsider - Daily Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Scottish space technology firm Bright Ascension is restructuring to become employee-owned as it sets its sights on becoming a world-class developer of satellite software.

The Dundee company, set up by Dr Peter Mendham in 2011, specialises in delivering software products and services for satellites as well as mission control and operations.

Bright Ascension's GenerationOne onboard software for mini-satellites was developed from it work on UKube-1 – the UK's first CubeSat mission, a Scottish-built mini-satellite designed by fellow Scottish company Clydespace which launched in 2014 as part of the United Kingdom Universal Bus Experiment.

Dr Mark McCrum, a software engineer with extensive experience of the space industry who joined Bright Ascension in 2012, is now the company's technical director.

The firm reported turnover of £314,000 last year, has recently added three new members of staff, taking the total team to nine employees.

Explaining the move to employee ownership, McCrum said: “In order to help meet plans for growth and to continue developing and creating innovative products, we started investigating the possibility of employee ownership in 2013 through an initial consultation with Co-operative Development Scotland (CDS).

“We met with a CDS advisor who explained employee ownership and that this might open up investment opportunities for the business.

“CDS introduced us to Capital for Colleagues, an investment vehicle focused on employee ownership and an appropriate package was developed.

“As well as the need for investment we were interested in employee ownership because it seems like the fairest way to structure the ownership of a company.

“In order to build a world class company we need to attract, retain, motivate and harness the best talent in the field and adopting an employee ownership model allows us to do that.”

He added: “Our staff have been receptive and enthusiastic to the changes so we are currently in the process of setting up an Employee Benefit Trust with an initial 20 per cent holding of the company. “The shares are being gifted by the current owners which is happening in conjunction with an investment by Capital for Colleagues.”

Sarah Deas, director at CDS, said: “Bright Ascension’s main priorities were to scale up the business by attracting investment and then fully engage its employees to drive performance within the business.