Every year the Spanish Association of Space, Aeronautics and Defense Technology Companies (Asociación Española de Empresas Tecnológicas de Defensa, Aeronáutica y Espacio: TEDAE) takes stock of this industry’s results as recorded at the end of the previous year, stressing such features as job-generation, turnover and the R&D investment percentage. The results reflect an upbeat situation in an industry nowadays accounting for 5.9% of the country’s industrial GDP..

The figures were presented by Jaime de Rábago, TEDAE President; Jorge Potti, CEO of GMV’s Space sector and Vice President of TEDAE’s Space Committee; Javier Pradere, Vicepresident of TEDAE’s Defense Committee and Alfredo Martínez-Menéndez, Vicepresident of TEDAE’s Aeronautics Committee.

Photo: TEDAE

 2017’s figures continue to show an upward trend. The quickest growing sector is Defense, 7.1% up on the previous year, followed by Aeronautics (4.6%) and Space (2%). It was the aeronautics sector, however, that clocked up the biggest turnover (8.947 billion euros), with a very even breakdown between the civil (52%) and military (48%) spheres.

Jorge Potti stressed the growth potential shown by Spain’s space sector, which now ranks 5th in Europe. The prospects are bright, not only in terms of the technological capabilities in this field but also the Spanish space delegation’s pledge to increase its ESA contribution.

TEDAE brought together a total of 77 companies trading in one of these three markets, which between them this year chalked up 11.180 billion euros and generated 56,404 highly-skilled jobs.